Nativity 39
by Mackiecam
Summary: The baby is here, and she seems to have inherited the disaster magnet gene from Steph. Just hours after her birth, she is stolen from the hospital nursery. The clock is ticking. Every minute away from Steph and her care puts Tia in more and more danger. Will Steph, Ranger, Joe and the Rangeman team find Tia before it's too late? Definitely a babe.
1. Chapter 1

_The following story is a work of fiction_ _that features characters developed by Janet Evanovich. No money has been earned through writing this story. Any similarities to real events or persons are entirely coincidental. _

_Although a stand-alone, this book builds upon the previous books in my series. Because it is a stand-alone, however, there is a lot of review in the first chapter and a lot of explanation of how I have changed the characters and storylines from JE's. I know some people find that a bit tedious. If you are sensitive to that and don't want the review, feel free to skip reading the first chapter._

_Out of the previous books in my series, the first one is a bit cupcake-y, but the rest are pure babes and develop the relationships between the characters. For maximum enjoyment, I suggest that you read them in the following order:_

_22 Caliber_

_Trigger Happy 23 _

_Morelli's Argument 23.5_

_Ranger 23.75_

_Threatening 24_

_Fixation 25_

_Security 26_

_Sneaky 27_

_Date Night at the Movies 27.1_

_Meeting Maria 27.2_

_The Intervention 27.3_

_Envious 28_

_Dickie's Demise 28.1_

_Mob Matters 28.2_

_Altercation at Giovichinni's 28.3_

_Numbskull 29_

_Toxic 30_

_Obit 31_

_Tamper 32_

_Theft 33_

_Forced 34_

_Fiesta 35_

_Step 36_

_Snatched 37_

_Exhumed 38_

_In recognition of the fact that I'm a binge reader and don't personally like to wait for updates, I will try to post twice daily. However, since my father died yesterday, my posting of my chapters may be a bit spotty. Please stick with me – the chapters will be posted as soon as I can._

_Reviews, as always, are greatly appreciated. I have a few people who regularly review for me, and I'd like to thank you for that. Your reviews have given me the confidence to write another story. I appreciate all reviews and try to respond to each and every one. Please note that I cannot respond to reviews that have been posted by guests. _

_Thank you for reading my story. I hope you enjoy it!_

_~ Sarah ~_

**Chapter One**

"How are you doing, babe?" asked Ranger, my husband of three months.

"The contractions are coming one on top of another, and I feel like every bone in my torso is being broken with every contraction." My name was Stephanie Plum and, despite only being thirty-four weeks pregnant, our baby had decided that today, May seventeenth, was a fabulous day to be born. She was coming no matter how much I wanted her to stay in there.

The labor was progressing fast. My water had broken five hours before, and Ranger and I had driven to the hospital right away. Because I'd had a mild case of preeclampsia, the doctor had wanted to monitor me closely throughout labor. Apparently, the chances of needing a C-section went up with preeclampsia, and the doctor wanted to ensure that the baby or I weren't in distress.

"Do you want me to rub your back again?" said Ranger.

"I don't want you to touch me", I said. I breathed through another wave of pain. "No offense."

"What can I do to help?"

I looked at him, and he looked tortured as he watched me go through another wave of contractions. I knew I had to give him something to make him feel like he was helping. "Just talk to me. I don't care what about. I just need something else to concentrate on. Tell me about work."

Ranger was the sole owner and CEO of Rangeman, an elite security company that provided all things security to anyone interested in hiring the best of the best. With seven locations and over fourteen hundred employees and growing, Rangeman was becoming a player in the security field and had a client list ranging from a number of the alphabet agencies to the Secret Service to multinational corporations to Mom-and-Pop businesses. Services ranged from system design, installation and monitoring, to bodyguarding, to providing security guards, to investigating, to cybersecurity, to researching. The last was my area of specialty. I was the Research Director for the company. I had a staff of thirteen, not including myself, and we worked for a number of people. We had nine different policing agencies, eight different bonding companies, six different real estate lawyers, four different real estate brokers, and one mutual company on our client list, and that was all in addition to our own in-house needs. In this work, we used a Rangeman-designed search engine, In-Spect, to find out all the secrets that people didn't want anyone knowing. The program would search every database out there and come up with a complete dossier of criminal, financial, medical, academic and professional history. As I liked to say, if the search engine or my staff couldn't find it, then the information wasn't there to be found. This information could be used in designing a security system, but it could also be used to provide the background necessary to make an arrest of a felon, or to develop a capture plan to be used when looking for a skip.

While I could do all the researching, my area of specialty was in preparing capture plans for the different bonds offices or police departments to use. I thought it came from my extensive history in searching for skips. While I had been a researcher at Rangeman for the last year, I'd been a bounty hunter for the last five. When a felon was arrested, they were often awarded the right to pay bail and wait for the hearing out in society rather than behind bars. Since, in jail, you had to poop in toilets in front of everyone, nobody wanted to remain in jail until their hearing. The problem was that often the felon didn't have the money to come up with the bail. That's where a bail bonds company came in. For fifteen percent of the price of the bond and some collateral, the bonds company would pay the bail fee for the felon. When the felon showed up for their hearing, the bonds company would get their bail money back and the felon would get their collateral back. The bonds company, however, would keep the fifteen percent.

If the felon didn't show up for their hearing, the bonds company would send a bounty hunter after them. When the felon was caught, the bounty hunter would take them back to the courts, the money would be returned to the bonds company, and the whole process would start anew – just with a higher bail bond fee. Many felons went through this process many times until the fifteen percent that was required was just too high to continue to avoid court.

For the role that the bounty hunter played, they were paid ten percent of the price of the bond, and the bonding company retained the other five percent for administrative purposes. It was a good job and, despite needing to periodically rely heavily on my mother's doggy bags, it had supported me for many years.

However, felons were often unhappy about being taken in and were quite aggressive about their desire to remain free. I'd been bitten, punched, kicked, stabbed, choked and shot while doing my job, and for that reason, I had just been preparing capture plans and letting Rangeman staff pick up the felons while I was pregnant. Since I greatly missed being out and about, I was looking forward to capturing felons again. I had worked out a deal with Ranger that I would be the Research Director four days a week and a bounty hunter for the other day, and I think we were both happy with that compromise.

I had learned to love research just as much as I loved being a bounty hunter. To someone as curious as I was, being able to discover people's secrets satisfied something in me. I liked being able to sit back and say 'gotcha' when I found something to prove their guilt. Of course, a lot of what my department did was routine and boring. However, so was the surveillance needed to successfully capture of a skip, so I guess there were negatives associated with both jobs.

I whimpered and closed my eyes as another wave of contractions washed over me.

"I phoned Tank and told him that he'd be running the office for a couple of weeks", said Ranger. Tank was our Executive Vice-President, and he was well able to run the office. He had done so frequently in the past. Ranger, although now only had to travel to monitor his six other locations, had formerly been a team leader and a trainer for PMC, a company of mercenaries who worked for a number of governments doing all the military-type of jobs that the governments didn't think were possible. Situated out of Colombia, with Ranger's Hispanic looks and fluency in Spanish he was a natural to work in the War on Drugs and had performed several missions and shut down several drug lords' operations. As a result, a number of drug lords were unhappy with him and wanted to seek revenge.

Drug lords weren't the only people wanting to seek revenge on Ranger. A number of terrorists did as well. Before Ranger helped start PMC, he had been an US Army Ranger and had gone on a number of top-secret missions. I didn't know the details to them, nor did I want to. However, I did know that Ranger was part of the team that carried the dead Osama bin Laden to the ship for burial at sea, much to the chagrin of the al-Qaeda. The al-Qaeda had targeted the SEAL team that had killed him and the Ranger team that had transported him and, after a few of his team members were assassinated, Ranger decided not to sign up for another tour. When he retired, he did it with the agreement that the government would set up an alternate identity for him, much like the government would set up for someone in WITSEC or to establish as a cover for a CIA operative. Everything changed for him, even down to his social security number. Carlos, decorated soldier and team lead, was listed as dead, and Ranger, college graduate from a business program at Douglass College, was born. The only thing that stayed the same was his name – but even that was blurred a bit. Before and during the time he was a US Army Ranger, his friends and family knew him as Carlos. After his identity was changed, his name to family became Ricky, and to friends and work associates he became Ranger. Even his business cards said Ranger, and his true name of Ricardo Carlos Manoso was a somewhat guarded secret.

Since then, Ranger had led a quiet life and tried to live under the radar. Our apartment was in the Rangeman building. Our credit cards were all corporate cards. Our phones were all corporate phones. Our cars were all corporate cars. His army pension was paid to Rangeman and marked as the purchase of security services. So were his dividend checks from PMC. The only way that you could trace Ranger was through his family.

Ranger had been concerned about getting together with me because he was afraid that the danger that was presented to him would spill over to me. When I met him five years before, I had been highly attracted to him and had tried to express my interest in him. He didn't appear to be interested, so I started going out with Joe Morelli, a Trenton plains-clothed cop who worked in the Crimes Against Persons division of the TPD. We had an on-again, off-again relationship for four years and had just broken up for the final time a year ago. Meanwhile, Ranger and I grew to be best friends. When Ranger's daughter from his first marriage and I were kidnapped two years before, Ranger realized that I was in danger for just knowing him, and getting together with him and the proximity to him wouldn't put me in more danger. He realized that having a closer connection with him would instead protect me, and he was all for protecting me as much as he could. However, I was still going out with Joe then and Ranger was honorable enough to not to try to poach.

But when I broke up with Joe, Ranger admitted to me that he had loved me from the first moment that he had seen me. The person who had always said that he would never get into a relationship with anyone told me that, although he didn't _want_ to get into a relationship with me, he _needed_ me in his life as much as he needed air to breathe. He then started going after a relationship with me with single-minded determination. Three months after we started going out, I moved in with him. Five weeks after that, we discovered I was pregnant. And now, less than a year after we started going out together, we were married and our first child was being born.

"I need to go to the bathroom", I said as I interrupted Ranger.

"I'll get the nurse", he said. He got up and walked to the door of the birthing room, and he met the nurse as she was coming in. He told her that I needed to be unhooked from the monitors as I wanted to go to the bathroom.

"I need to go NOW", I said. I'd already had bouts of diarrhea earlier, but it had seemed to sort itself out for the last hour or two. Of course, I didn't think there was anything left in my body to poop out and I was surprised I had to go now.

"Let me just check to see whether it is safe", said the nurse. "Sometimes feeling like you have to go to the bathroom means that you're ready to push." I whimpered and bent my legs. I really needed to go, and I didn't like the fact that I had to wait. She checked and smiled. "You're ten centimeters dilated. This baby is ready to come out now."


	2. Chapter 2

"Waaa", said Tia. I thought there was no sound as dear as hearing your baby's first wail after birth. In fact, I thought it might be the only time that I would be happy to hear her cry. With suffering from preeclampsia, the chances of having a stillborn baby went up and no matter how many ultrasounds we did and how many times my doctor let me listen to her heartbeat, I was still afraid that she wouldn't live through the birthing process.

Ranger was sitting on the bed behind me, and I rested against him for a moment. Dr. Wilson smiled at me. "Just a few more pushes, Stephanie, and we'll deliver the afterbirth."

I pushed and the afterbirth slithered out, and the doctor said that he was going to stitch some of the bigger tears. Ranger and I barely paid attention to him. Our gaze was zeroed in on the bassinet in the corner where the pediatrician and the nurses were working. Tia was still crying and from what I could see her arms and legs were flailing around. I guess I looked worried, because Dr. Wilson looked at me and smiled. "She has a lusty cry", he said.

"Is she okay?"

"The pediatrician will talk to you in a minute", he said. "I can't answer that. I'm looking after you, not Tia."

Five minutes later, Dr. Wilson was finished stitching up the tears and the nurse carried over Tia. The baby was snuffling and looking less frantic, and the nurse said, "your baby is a miracle baby." She helped me undo the ties at my shoulder and hold the baby so that there was skin-on-skin contact.

"Why do you call her the miracle baby?" asked Ranger.

"Normally, when a baby is born at thirty-four weeks, they need a little help with their breathing. As you can hear, she is having no trouble at all with her breathing. Her cry is strong. So is her grip, and she has pinked up quite quickly. We have to do some more testing, but from everything we can see she is not exhibiting many of the symptoms of most babies born at thirty-four weeks. Her Apgar score, at five minutes, was eight. That is very good for a term baby, let alone a preterm baby."

Tia started rooting on my chest, and the nurse smiled. "Let's see if she can feed." She helped me position Tia's head. With some encouragement, the baby was able to feed a bit. As the baby learned to suck, the nurse said, "I can't believe that you were only in labor for five hours, and the actual delivery only took twenty minutes. Do you know how rare that is?"

"I was actually in labor for the last month", I said with a smile. "When I was last at the doctor's office, I had dilated four centimeters. It's just that my water broke five hours ago and I started having contractions every ten minutes or so."

Ranger was still sitting behind me, and he was looking over my shoulder. "She's so little. How big is she?"

"She a perfect tiny bundle. She's four pounds, three ounces."

"Hold her with me", I said to him.

Ranger encircled his arms until he was holding onto Tia with me, and he kissed my bare shoulder. "Te amo mucho. I love you so much", he said.

I smiled. "I love you too. Yo también te amo." Ranger was fluent in Spanish. I was not. But when I was put on complete bed rest, I decided to use my time to learn Spanish. Teaching myself from the Internet was not going well though, so I'd asked Ranger for help a month ago. He had been particularly helpful, and I now could say a few phrases. My goal was to know enough Spanish to be able to carry on a conversation.

Julie, Ranger's thirteen-year old daughter from his first marriage, was coming up for the summer and promised to help Ranger teach me some Spanish words. While she wasn't bilingual, she knew much more Spanish than I did. Ranger was going to work on her Spanish this summer as well. We thought it would be beneficial to her when she got a job later in life. Her current ambition was to become an FBI agent, and knowing a second language would be helpful for her.

I got along well with Julie. She lived in Florida and we only saw her the third weekend of every month. I enjoyed her visits as much as Ranger did. With floating in and out of labor, however, we had cancelled her visit for this month. Besides, in another three weeks she would be coming for the entire summer. I was looking forward to it, and only hoped that Tia would be able to come home by the time that Julie arrived.

"Is she too tiny?" I said to the nurse. "She seems awfully small."

"She is on the small side, but that may be because she will be a smaller person even as she grows up. I wouldn't concentrate on her small size. Concentrate instead on the pinkness of her skin, the strength behind her cries, her ability to nurse. Those are all more important than her size."

"She seems fairly lean", said Ranger.

"She is, but that is part of being a premature baby", said the nurse. "They haven't had the extra weeks to store up the fat necessary to keep them warm. We will still need to test her to see if she can maintain body heat. She may have to lie in a heated bed to help her regulate her body heat at first."

"So does that mean that she won't be sleeping beside us?"

"No. Your baby will have to sleep in the nursery at first, just until we know that she can survive in an open crib. We'll want to keep her here for a few days anyway, just so that we know that she isn't becoming jaundiced. Did you have a steroid shot to make the baby's lungs develop faster?"

"I did."

"That would explain why Tia's lungs are as well developed as they are. She hasn't needed oxygen at all." She smiled. "As I said, she's a superstar."

"Hey, peanut. Did you hear that? You're a superstar." I kissed Ranger's shoulder. "Do you want to hold her?"

"If you don't mind."

"Ranger! Of course I don't mind. You're her daddy." I leaned forward so that he could take his shirt off, and the nurse's eyes bugged out slightly. Ranger, of course, didn't notice. I angled my body away and carefully handed Tia over to him. He held her gently and carefully.

"My God, she's tiny", he said.

I smiled. "Now can I go to the bathroom?" I said.

The nurse laughed. "Let me walk with you there", she said. "I don't want you up and walking anywhere unescorted for another couple of hours."

She walked with me to use the facilities and by the time I had returned, Ranger was sitting in the easy chair to the side of the bed. The nurse helped me back into the bed, and I looked at the time. I wanted to know when I would be able to move around on my own, and the nurse had said two hours.

Ranger was still enraptured with Tia, and I thought that I had never seen as sexy a view as watching him hold the baby. Something inside me broke, and tears came to my eyes. I smiled as he looked up at me. When he looked concerned, I said, "it's so perfect, you know? You remind me of that old ad of the muscled man holding a newborn. Was it a Calvin Klein underwear advertisement?" I looked at him. "Tia looks like she could fit in the palm of your hand."

"My guess is that she's only about sixteen inches", said Ranger. "She's just a little peanut."

The nurse came and took my blood pressure. "136/75. You're doing great", she said.

"Sounds like your pressure is starting to fall", said Ranger.

"It will probably take about six weeks until your blood pressure stabilizes", said the nurse. She turned to Ranger. "I should get this little one off to the nursery so that she can be monitored, and the two of you deserve a nap. We'll come get you when it is time to feed the baby again."


	3. Chapter 3

Ranger had been able to settle, but I was unable to. I knew that it was almost eleven-thirty and I knew that I had been up since four that morning, but I had this great feeling of dread and an almost primal need to see my baby. I needed to reassure myself that Tia was alright.

I eased out of bed and, as I moved, Ranger opened his eyes. "Do you need the washroom again?" he said.

I blew out a breath. "I need to see Tia." I paused. "It should be time to feed her soon anyway."

Ranger looked at me. "What's wrong?" he said.

I started to cry. "I don't know. I just keep thinking that something is wrong, and I need to see Tia to reassure myself that everything is okay."

Ranger looked concerned. I don't know if that was because I was acting particularly crazy or whether he too thought something was wrong. "I'll walk with you."

"I know that she is probably just fine", I said as I sniffled. "I know that in my head, but my heart is saying that she's in danger."

"Babe, you never have to explain to me your instincts."

"What happens if they are off?"

"Then they are off and that's okay. Your instinct can't be right every time. However, your instinct is spot-on often enough that I think we should go and see our baby. If nothing else, it will allow you to settle. You won't sleep until you see Tia and reassure yourself that she is safe and well and, out of anyone, you deserve to have a good nap."

I slid out of the bed and put my flip-flops on, pulled Ranger's housecoat around me – I had taken to wearing Ranger's housecoat when I first met him, and that practice hadn't changed after I moved in. Ranger said that he didn't mind. He wasn't a housecoat-sort of guy, and hadn't worn his housecoat much before I had commandeered it. I had offered to let him wear my housecoat, but he said that he'd stick with wearing sleep pants, a t-shirt and a hoody. Apparently the idea of wearing something pink and frilly wasn't appealing to him. I couldn't understand why not.

I waited while Ranger slid his feet into his shoes, and walked with him out of the hospital room to the nursery. Ranger took the responsibility of making sure that I was alright seriously, and he walked with his hand on my elbow. When we got to the nursery, there seemed to be a commotion inside. A security staffer was there, a doctor was there, and both nurses were congregated around a bassinet.

We walked into the nursery and looked at the various babies, but could not spot Tia. A nurse came up to us. "May I help you?" she said.

"We're looking for Tia Plum", I said. Like we had decided for me to keep my maiden name when we got married and my official address my old apartment to try to maintain distance from Ranger, we had decided that it would be safer for Tia to have my surname rather than Ranger's. Ranger, in fact, didn't even want his name on the birth certificate.

The nurse turned white. "Come sit", she said. "The doctor would like to talk to you."

I could feel my face turn white and I whimpered slightly. The nurse led me to a rocker, and I plopped down hard. I was thankful to be sitting down. Just judging by the expression on the nurse's face, the doctor wouldn't be delivering good news.

I reached up and held Ranger's hand tightly, and I leaned against his hip as the doctor came over to us, accompanied by a security guard. "I'm sorry", he said, "but your baby is missing."

The world started to spin and I took a deep breath. "Ranger", I said in a panicky voice and I could tell that the shakiness of my voice showed him something was wrong.

Ranger moved quickly. He pushed my head down between my knees. "Push up against my hand, babe", he said, softly and calmly. "Breathe deeply."

"How can I breathe deeply when I am crumpled over myself?" I said on a sob. After a moment of breathing as deeply as I could, I said, "I think I'm okay now."

He let me up and I stared at him. He was crouched down next to me, and he looked as frantic as I felt.

He stood up and looked at the doctor. "What the fuck is going on?"

"Mr. Plum, I assure you that we are doing everything possible to find your baby", said the security guard.

"Step me through what has happened", said Ranger.

"It doesn't matter how it has happened", said the security guard. "It just matters that it has."

Ranger pulled out his phone. "Hi, Joe", he said when the person answered. "I need some police support. Tia is missing." He listened for a moment as the security guard looked more and more uncomfortable. "See you in about fifteen minutes." He hung up and turned to the security guard. "Detective Morelli said he'd use his Kojak light, so that means you have approximately ten minutes to go over everything you can think of with me."

"The police are already coming."

"Detective Morelli will take over the case. What do you have to tell him?"

"I can wait until he is here."

Ranger let go of my hand, picked the security guard up by his shirt and pushed him up against the wall. The security guard's feet pinwheeled in the air and his face turned red. "Every second that my daughter is missing means that she is not getting the care or the food that she needs to grow healthy and strong. Every second that my daughter is missing means that she is put into more and more danger. So I'll ask you one more time. What. The. Fuck. Happened."

"Mr. Plum", said the doctor, "we are as concerned as you about Tia's disappearance. We are doing our best in getting her back."

The nurse who had seemed so distressed when we first arrived looked at Ranger holding up the security guard, at the doctor, and at me. "Someone entered the nursery and walked out with your baby. We had assumed that the person was you. She was wearing a hospital gown and it was time for your baby to be fed, so we thought that she was you and that you were taking your baby back to your room so that you could feed the baby in comfort."

"Was she wearing a hospital bracelet?" said Ranger.

She thought for a moment. "Yes, she was", said the nurse.

Ranger put the security guard down and focused intensely on the nurse. "Did she look like she had just given birth?"

"No, now that you mention it", said the nurse. "Her stomach was quite flat."

He turned to the security guard. "Have you done a hospital-wide search for any missing patients?"

"No", said the security guard.

I could tell that Ranger wanted to hit something, and I slipped my hand into his again and squeezed slightly.

Ranger's voice turned deadly calm and quiet. "Then don't you think you should?"

The security guard pulled out his radio and asked the person in the security office to put out an alert. Seconds later, a bulletin went out over the announcements. "That will get all nurses to check to make sure patients are all accounted for and where they are supposed to be", said the nurse.

"Tell me about Tia", said Ranger. "What condition is she in? How long can she be away from the nursery and, more importantly, how long can she be away from Stephanie?"

"Tia is unable to keep her body at a constant temperature", said the doctor. "She was doing a fairly good job, but she could use some extra help. She fed fairly well, but she will need to eat every two hours. Otherwise, she is doing well. As long as the kidnapper keeps Tia warm and feeds her frequently, she'll be fine."

"Do you have security cameras that could have captured her image?" I said.

The security guard looked up, and Ranger turned to me. "It isn't a lockdown unit, and the only camera on the floor is at the elevators. The security in this hospital is dismal."

"It's not that bad", said the security guard. You could almost see his feathers getting ruffled.

"My daughter was just kidnapped, only one camera is available to capture the kidnapper's image and you haven't pulled the feed yet to identify the kidnapper. It is that bad." The security guard looked at him, his mouth flapping open and shut like a fish out of water, and Ranger pulled out his phone. "Get that video pulled." As the security guard pulled out his radio again, Ranger dialed a number and held his phone to his ear. "Hi, Miguel", he said. "I'm going to have an emergency job for you to do. I know that it's Sunday, but I need you in the office." Miguel was one of my Research Managers and was the person who had taken over my department while I was on leave. He paused. "You'll be working with Morelli. Steph delivered Tia at twenty-six minutes to ten this morning, and someone has stolen Tia. We're pulling video of the kidnapper, and I want to know everything about her. Name and address, of course, but I want to know everything. Likes, dislikes, habits, financial, medical, social, criminal, professional and academic. I want a complete workup on her. Go as intensely as you can." He listened for a moment and looked at me. "She's hanging in there." He blew out a breath as Miguel said something else. "Thanks, Miguel. We owe you one. And tell Dirk that we owe him one as well." He hung up the phone.

"Miguel is contacting Dirk?"

"He said that the work would get done faster if Dirk was called in, and they would both do anything to help."

"They are good guys."

"You're a good team."

"This matter is an issue that the police should be handling", said the security guard. "I'm not releasing the woman's likeness to you."

I slipped my hand into Ranger's again and squeezed slightly. I wasn't sure how much more attitude Ranger would be able to take before he blew up.

Joe badged his way into the nursery. "I met a set of uniforms on the way in. I informed them that I would be taking over the investigation", he said. "They seemed quite happy to hand over responsibility."

He nodded at Ranger and gave me a quick hug. "Hey, cupcake. You hanging in there?" he said softly.

"Yeah. Barely."

He nodded, and then turned to Ranger. "What do we have?"

"The most ineffective security system that I have ever seen", said Ranger. "Staff are ill-trained and ineffective, the security system is practically useless and security staff are more concerned about covering their asses and trying to make sure that the hospital isn't fingered with making a mistake than they are with trying to be proactive and fixing it." He caught his breath. "The security staff are totally uncaring of the fact that Tia could be dying while we waste our time here."

"We're taking the steps to find Tia again", said the security guard.

"Have you pulled that feed yet?" said Ranger in a biting voice.

"I never thought that I would ever see you lose control like this", said Morelli. "Even when Julie was kidnapped you were far more controlled."

"Julie didn't need fed every two hours or have problems keeping herself warm."

"Fair. You need to take a deep breath though. Tia needs you to be calm just as much as Julie needed you to be calm." Morelli turned to the security guard. "Do you have the feed from the security camera?"

"We're just pulling it now."

Morelli turned back to us. "When we get a picture to work with, can Miguel come in to do some research?"

"Miguel and Dirk are both on their way to the office right now, and are waiting for the picture so that they can run it through the databases. They are two-timing the research so that it is done faster. We should have a complete workup well before dinner."

"Who are you?" said the security guard.

"This is Ranger Manoso", said Morelli. "He's a consultant to the Trenton Police Department and is one of the leading security specialists in the country." He turned to Ranger. "I think you should be putting in a proposal to take over the security services for the hospital. You could do wonders with the system."

"I never thought the system was particularly bad before", said the doctor.

"You lost a baby", said Morelli. "I think the system needs an overhaul."

"I have to look after the babies", said the nurse. "Do you need anything here?"

"Did you see the woman who stole Tia?" said Morelli.

"I did. I thought she was Tia's mother."

"What did she look like?"

"She was about five feet and five inches tall, had olive skin and bleached blonde hair with dark roots. She was thin and walked with confidence. There was no question as to who she was going for."

"Where was Tia located?"

"She was in the bassinet closest to the door."

"Do you think then that she specifically picked Tia or do you think Tia was targeted because she was the baby closest to the front?"

"It also could have something to do with Tia herself. Unlike most babies in the nursery, she wasn't receiving any help with breathing. She wasn't hooked up to monitors. The only extra help that she needed was the heated bed that she was on. She's just a bit too little to keep herself warm."

"How will she be away from the heated mattress?"

"The baby will be fine if the kidnapper holds her against her body in a skin-on-skin contact. I don't know if she has enough ability to regulate her temperature by herself, even if she is swaddled."

"What about feeding?"

"She needs to feed every two hours. Her tummy is little, so she can't take much food at once. The other problem is that she won't be receiving the colostrum that Stephanie will be producing right now, and the baby's immune system needs it."

"I'd suggest that Stephanie pumps it", said the doctor, "so that we can feed it to Tia when she is returned. It won't be as good as getting it fresh, but it will be better than nothing."

I whimpered and buried my head in Ranger's hip, and he brought his hand down and massaged the tense muscles at the back of my neck.

The security guard's radio squawked and he stepped away to listen to what the other guard had to say. Morelli turned to Ranger and me. "I have called in the entire team and as soon as we get a picture of the woman we'll be issuing an Amber alert. We'll set up operations in your hospital room so that you know what is going on at all times."

"Can I work with you on this?" said Ranger.

"You can, as long as Steph doesn't need you and as long as you are able to keep calm. I know that, when we find her, she will need you just as much as you need her. She'll be able to hear your voice and it will calm her down. Do you think you can keep calm?"

"Morelli. I'm the epitome of calm."

"You look like you want to punch the security staff."

"Yes, but it is a testament to my calmness that I haven't."

"Joe", I said, "Ranger was remarkably calm. The security guard we were dealing with was defensive and had attitude. I almost punched him myself, and you know that I am never like that." Joe knew that well. While we had broken up for the final time a year before, he had remained, after Ranger, my best friend and, after Ranger, was the person in life who knew me best. He had told me that I was his best friend as well, and I knew Joe pretty well too. And I knew that he was barely hanging onto his temper.

The security guard came back. "We've pulled the feed", he said.

"Let's go down to see it", said Morelli. He turned to Ranger. "Are you coming or staying?"

Ranger turned to me. "Do you need me, babe?"

"Please go", I said. "I'll stay and pump the colostrum so that Tia gets some good food when we get her back." I swallowed back a sob. "Between you and Joe, I know that you'll get her back quickly."

Ranger leaned down and gave me a quick kiss.

"We'll get her back", said Joe.

"Hurry", I said.


	4. Chapter 4

"They'll get her back", said the doctor as he looked at me.

I swallowed back a sob. "She's so little. She's just over four pounds. That's four blocks of butter."

"As long as the kidnapper feeds her and keeps her warm, Tia will be just fine."

"But we don't know if the kidnapper is mentally capable of caring for her."

"You have to believe that she is." He stood up. "I'm going to contact the on-call psychiatrist. I believe you could use some support."

"That's okay. I have my therapist's home number. I can call her." I had been seeing the corporate psychologist for the past two months, primarily to keep my blood pressure down. However, through my sessions with her I had started talking to her about my innermost feelings. She was, besides Ranger, the only person I fully trusted to tell those thoughts and feelings to. She had a calm and steady outlook on life, she was always willing to listen, and I thought that I was beginning to look at things differently. It was, I thought, a good shift. I was starting to deal with a lot of crap, and any shift in outlook was a good one. In fact, I gave Livy and Ranger credit for me being able to keep my blood pressure steady over the last two months. Sure, the blood pressure medication would have helped. However, I thought that it was my ability to talk to Livy and Ranger that most helped.

Ranger had been attending his own therapy sessions as well. I'd been in some danger over the course of my pregnancy. At the beginning of November, I was almost kidnapped and shot. That was when we found out that I was pregnant. At the end of November, I was almost kidnapped and, when I was, I got into a tussle with the would-be kidnapper. He kicked me in the stomach and I had started to bleed. Tia was a fighter though, and I didn't lose the baby. Then, three weeks later, I was shot twice. I had been wearing a bulletproof jacket thankfully, but it had resulted in a couple of broken ribs and bone bruises. The baby was okay but Ranger was not. He had seen me get shot both times, and it seemed to make an impression on him. He had started to suffer from nightmares. He had become more anxious and startled easily. He was more easily irritated and impatient. He lost his joy and had trouble sleeping. At first he dealt with it by working out more but, when that didn't help, he started seeing the corporate psychiatrist. Gabriel had been as good a resource to him as Livy was to me and, although the work that Gabriel and Ranger had been doing hadn't eliminated Ranger's PTSD symptoms, Ranger had become more relaxed then he had been.

Gabriel had been working with Ranger not only for his PTSD, but he'd also been working with him to help Ranger find balance in his life. Ranger was a workaholic and hadn't realized how much that work had taken over his life. Through Gabriel's support, Ranger had been able to cut his hours from one hundred-hour work weeks down to fifty-hour work weeks. He had adjusted his life so that he was doing more things for him and had added more things that he found rewarding into his life. So he was now cooking breakfasts each day and dinners on the weekends. He'd started teaching a self-defense class every Monday after dinner. He was taking time to talk, plan and dream with me. He was more available to me than he had ever been, and he was someone who had traditionally always had time for me.

He had been meeting with Gabriel once a week, although he increased his sessions to twice a week when I started having problems with my blood pressure and was put on bed rest. He thought that it would be important to me for him to remain as calm as could be, and he had found that Gabriel was beneficial in keeping him calm. He thought, however, that the sessions were so helpful that he'd continue seeing Gabriel once a week for the foreseeable future.

I was glad. Ranger was typically a serene person. He appeared to never get upset and he never got mad at you. However, in the past year I had discovered that it was all a front and he just hid his feelings well. He was typically calm and able to focus on the true issues at hand, but he internalized things much more than would appear. Over the last six months, the coil inside him was growing a little too tight, and he was finding it more difficult to find his peace again. However, with his therapy sessions that coil was springing open and he was reconnecting with his Zen – and that was as reassuring to Ranger as it was for me. I had never realized how much I relied on Ranger's ability to handle whatever came his way, how much I relied on Ranger's ability to accept what was happening in life, until he was unable to roll with the punches. I was worried about him, and I knew that he would need support right then just as much as I would. I thought that, when I called Livy, that I might call Gabriel at the same time.

"I think that would be a good idea", said the doctor.

The nurse came back with the nurse who had been working with me in the birthing room. "Tracy is going to escort you back to your room", she said, "and will help you pump some milk for Tia for when she returns", she said.

I stood and swayed for a moment, and took a deep breath as Tracy grabbed hold of my elbow. She walked with me back to my hospital room as I tried not to pass out. I have never been as happy to get to a bed in my life, and I lay down as the nurse adjusted the bed so that I was sitting up. "You okay?" she asked. "You look a little white."

"I'll be fine", I said. I hoped.

"Typically, since your baby is in the nursery, we would have kicked you out into a ward. However, with everything that has happened the hospital administrators have requested that you stay in this room."

"That will make it easier for my husband and the police to find me when they come back. I know that they hoped to turn this room into the command center so that I could be kept informed of what was going on."

"I don't know if the hospital administrators will like that."

"No offense, but I don't really care. This hospital, because of its ineffective security program, has allowed my baby to be kidnapped. My baby needs special care, and chances are most likely that she isn't getting it. I need to know what is going on with the search for her and, as you saw by the fact that I almost passed out on the way back from the nursery to here, I'm not ready to go down to another command post somewhere else in the building."

A man and a woman, both in suits, walked into the room. "I'm Thomas Sanchez and this is Candace Moshe", he said. "I'm the CEO of the hospital and Candace is the head of our Public Relations department, and I want to say how sorry we are for what has happened."

"I appreciate that."

"How can we help?" said Candace. "We want to do everything we can to support you."

"This room will become the command center for the recovery operation", I said. "This means that we'll need a television and phone and internet access in this room. There will be a number of people supporting me personally and the investigation in general coming in and out, and the hospital staff needs to be prepared for that. You'll notice that there is a uniformed police officer outside the door, as well as one outside the nursery. This will be important. If the theft occurred because Tia in particular was targeted, then I will need to be protected while I am unable to adequately take care of myself. If any baby could have been acceptable to the kidnapper, the babies in the nursery need to be protected. If Tia doesn't make it", I shuddered in a breath, "then all the other babies are in danger as the kidnapper may come back and try it all again."

"Okay."

"There will be a number of people who will be coming. The company my husband owns is Rangeman, a company that specializes in security issues. I am just about to call some of our staff to come and help out. However, we will need complete cooperation with your staff. So far we have found your staff to be a hindrance to the operation, and I'll fully blame your staff if Tia is found harmed or, God forbid, dead, and I will make a public statement as to that fact."

"You don't have to do that", said Candace. "We will make sure that all staff are as supportive as you need them to be."

"Thank you", I said. "If you can leave your number, I will call you. In the meantime, I have some calls to make."

Thomas looked at me, a little befuddled, and Candace touched him on his arm to guide him out of the room. "I'll leave our numbers with the nursing station", she said. "Also, we will designate Tracy as your private nurse so that you always have access to medical help. I understand you have a problem with high blood pressure."

"That's true", I said. "I'm sure this isn't going to help it. Thank you for designating Tracy to look after me, and I'll talk to you later."

"We'll get you access to the television, phones and internet", said Candace, "and if there is anything else that you need, just tell Tracy and she'll arrange it."

"Thank you." I picked up my phone and called Tank as they walked out of the room. "Hey", I said.

"Hey, Steph. How are you doing?"

"Terrible. Have you talked to Ranger?"

"No. What's going on?"

"He's a little off his game. We need you to come to the hospital and bring both Emergency Response Teams. Tia has been kidnapped." Ranger employed two ERTs. They were all former special ops soldiers and had formed two of the most skilled emergency response teams outside the military. Each team consisted of a medic, a munitions expert, a sniper, a bomb expert, a communications expert and so on, and they were trained in everything from extractions to hostage negotiations to attacks and elimination of targets. I may have been overreacting, but I believed that we needed all the firepower that we could get.

"What?"

"Tia was born just after nine-thirty this morning. We talked to you afterwards."

"Yes", said Tank. I could hear him pick up his keys, talk to someone, and run out of his apartment. I could hear two sets of footsteps running down the stairs outside his apartment and seconds later get into Tank's car.

"About eleven I got a bad feeling that something was wrong. After about half an hour of telling myself I was being silly, Ranger and I walked down to the nursery to see if Tia was alright, and we discovered that she was gone. Someone in a hospital gown had picked her up out of her crib and left with her. Morelli is here, and Ranger and Morelli have gone down to the security office to see the feed from the single security camera on the floor."

"Okay. So you need ERT support. What else do you need?"

"Gabriel and Livy need to be called in. I think both Ranger and I could use their support. Miguel and Dirk are already on their way to the office and will take the copy of the feed and find out who the person is and her history."

"Amelia is with me. We were just about to come to the hospital to see you and Tia."

"I'm in room 304. On the way, you need to go to Rangeman and get Ranger's and my laptops. We will soon have internet access, and Ranger and I could use the link to the Rangeman network. When Ranger and Morelli are finished in the security office, they are returning to tell me what is going on. It would be great if we had support here by then."

"Amelia is texting an emergency alert to all staff as we speak, and Amelia and I will be at the Rangeman building in a few minutes."

"Thanks, Tank. I'm sure you'll be receiving a call from Ranger in a few minutes, but he's a little off his game right now. I have never seen him almost lose control as much as he did when the security guard was particularly unhelpful and refusing to talk to us. His stress levels are through the roof."

"Okay. Look, Ranger is calling me and I'm almost at Rangeman. I'll see you in about twenty minutes."

"Thanks, Tank."

I hung up the phone and called my mother. "Hi, Mom."

"Hey, baby girl. We were just about to come and see you, and to meet our newest granddaughter."

"Don't bother", I said. I shuddered in a breath. "Tia is missing, and my room is a zoo. We are working with Joe and have started a full-out search for her. I can't talk long, as I need to call a few people. But I wanted to let you know that I wouldn't be able to spend any time with you and Tia has been kidnapped, so there's no point in coming."

"My God. Are you okay?"

"Not really. But I am dealing with this the best as I can."

"How is Ranger?"

"As frantic as I am. I'm sorry, Mom, but I have another call coming in from Rangeman, and I need to get it."

"Okay. Do you need us to come for support?"

"No. It would be better for you not to be here."

"Okay. We'll stay put and only come when you say it's alright."

"Whatever you do, do NOT let Grandma come." My grandmother was a good woman, but she loved and thrived on strife, and she loved spreading rumors. She would be enthused to be in the thick of things, and she would be excited rather than traumatized by what was happening. "If she comes, I'll have the police turn her away at the door."

"I understand", said my mother. "I'll say a prayer for you."

"Thanks, Mom. I've got to go." I quickly hung up as I continued to pretend that I needed to accept a call from Rangeman. The call finished, I called Ranger's parents. "Hi", I said.

"Stephanie", said Ranger's mother. "We are on our way to the hospital right now. We should be there in half an hour."

"I actually need you to turn back." I explained to them what was going on. "Ranger and I are going to need all the space in our hospital room that we can get. We have about twenty-five Rangeman staff coming to help with the search, plus police."

"My God! This is Julie all over again."

"Yes, but I don't know if it was Tia specifically this time", I said. "Tia's bassinet was the closest to the door, so the kidnapper might have just wanted a baby and any baby would have done. We are in the process of figuring it out."

"I know that Ricky had asked us to hide his existence and to tell everyone that he had died. We used to call him Carlos, and switched when he got back from the army. To explain his presence, he asked us to tell everyone that he was my nephew and to call him Ricardo. Is this one of those reasons?"

"Yes. Tia will be in danger every single day, although by making some decisions we can try to mitigate that danger as much as possible. It is, in fact, why she will have my last name and Ranger's name won't be going on the birth certificate. It is also why her nanny will be a trained bodyguard. You are the only weak link between his former life and his current life and, if he'd been smart, he would have let you believe that he had died and cut off all ties to you. He couldn't do that though. You are too important to him. However, as far as society knows, the Carlos you know is dead and we need him to stay dead. Now, probably on the radio on the way back, you'll hear an Amber alert. One will be issued as soon as they have a picture of the woman. I wanted to prepare you for that."

"Steph", said Ranger's father, "we will continue to Trenton rather than turning back, but I understand why you don't want us at the hospital. We'll rent a hotel room so that we are close by to you to provide support for whatever happens. Can you keep us informed, even if it is to tell us that nothing has happened?"

"I will. I'm sorry, but I have to go." I hung up the phone a few minutes later and called Ella, Ranger's housekeeper and adopted mom, to pass on the news.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time Tracy finished helping me pump some milk for Tia, Ranger and Joe had walked back into the room. "I heard you called in the ERTs", said Morelli.

"No offense, Joe, but I wanted some of our own on the case", I said.

"None taken", said Morelli. "When Ranger was calling Tank, it was to tell him that we had an identity, we think, of the woman who took the baby."

"Who is it? Is it someone we know?"

"I doubt it", said Ranger. "Her name is Yvette Marley. She's a psych patient who has walked off the floor."

I blanched. "Why was she on the psych floor?" I said.

"She lost her baby about three months ago. Her baby was a preemie, born at twenty-six weeks, and who died shortly after being born. Yvette's husband died in a car accident on the way to the hospital to see her when she was in labor. The two events together have pushed her over the edge and she has been psychotic ever since. She doesn't believe that her baby has died, and she believes that her husband will soon arrive. She is not responding to treatment. Her psychiatrist believes that, in her mind, Tia is her baby and she's the mother."

Tank and Amelia walked into the room. Amelia walked over to me and gave me a hug. "We'll get her", she said.

Morelli called in the uniform standing guard. "From now on, check credentials of all staff coming into and out of this room. If they have Rangeman credentials or TPD credentials, let them in. Otherwise, ask for confirmation from someone inside before you let them in."

"Yes, sir", said the uniform.

"Do you think my life is in danger?" I said.

"No", said Morelli. "However, I think Ranger will self-combust if we don't take steps to ensure your safety."

I glanced over at him and where he was talking with Tank, and I could see the tension in his body. "How's he doing?" I said to Morelli quietly.

"He's coping. He's so incredibly strong. I don't know how he's doing it. I don't think I could. However, although I thought he was going to break every bone in the security guard's body when the security guard was being uncooperative and stonewalling the investigation, now that we are doing something he is getting himself under control."

"I talked to the hospital administration", I said. "I told them that we needed to use this room as command central, that we had a number of people coming, and that there would be an increased presence. They tried to cover their asses, and I calmly told them what I expected them to do and what we needed, and I told them that if they didn't cooperate I would go to the media and tell them that the hospital allowed our baby to be kidnapped. I don't think they were expecting me to be as calm as I was."

"Like with Ranger, I don't know how you are doing it."

"Tia needs us to be calm. We won't accomplish anything by being hysterical."

ERT members started to filter into the room, and Tracy came in to take my blood pressure. She looked around her and her eyes bugged out. I could understand. To a one, every ERT member was built. Some, like Hector, looked like they should belong in a gang or be a prison inmate. Other team members were GQ pretty boys. All team members were caring, compassionate, and men who valued family above all else. Every single one looked pissed that this had happened to Ranger and me.

Gabriel and Livy walked in, and came over to me. Ranger looked equally as thankful to see them as I was. I was glad that I called them and hoped that Ranger would have some time to talk to Gabriel while we waited for the research that Miguel and Dirk were doing to be cycled through.

Tracy took my blood pressure and wrote down the result. "It's a little high", she said, "but I can understand why. I'm sure it will come down when you find Tia."

"How high is it?" said Gabriel.

"144/85", she said. "It's higher than the earlier reading, but as I said, that makes sense. We'll keep an eye on it."

By the time she had finished taking my vitals, the hospital room had filled up. "If I could have ERT1 to my right", said Ranger, "and ERT2 to my left." The men all rearranged themselves accordingly. Tracy stood to the side of the room and watched avidly. "Is everyone here?" said Ranger. The men all looked around and Raphael and Hector, the two team leads, said their teams were fully mobilized. "Good. For those of you who don't know the background, Steph delivered a healthy baby girl this morning just after nine-thirty. Since Tia was born prematurely and was consequently having trouble maintaining her body temperature, she was whisked to the nursery to sleep in a bassinet on a heated mattress. At around eleven o'clock, Steph felt that something was wrong and after worrying about it for twenty minutes, we decided to walk down to the nursery to see Tia and reassure ourselves that she was okay. When we got there, we found that Tia had been stolen from her bassinet twenty minutes before."

"They didn't tell you?" said Eduardo. The shock in his voice was reflected in every man's face.

"The hospital staff have been remarkably unresponsive and unhelpful", said Ranger. "That is another problem that we aren't going to address right now. Heads can roll after the dust settles, but at this point we have to keep our eye on the prize."

"What is Tia's condition?" asked Hal. "If she needed to be on a heated mattress, what is her ability to survive off of it?"

"Tia is luckily very healthy and doesn't have many of the symptoms of being a preemie. She is unable to regulate her body temperature but does not need help in breathing. She is still learning how to suck and swallow, but she can swallow some nourishment. The problem is that the colostrum, or the mother's first milk, is particularly good for all new infants and contains many of the antibodies and nutrients needed to kickstart the baby's immune system. Tia has had very little of this milk. Steph is pumping it so that it will be available for Tia to drink when we do get her back."

"When Tia was taken", I said, "she was coming up to a feeding time. She will need to be fed about every two hours. A mother's milk or formula will be important as it is the only source of both liquids and nutrients that she will get, and to go without it will result in her being dehydrated and starving. She has no fat reserves to rely on."

"Another problem", said Morelli, "is that Tia was not swaddled or covered when she was taken. This means that we have a baby that is unable to maintain a stable body temperature being carried around the hospital naked. She is, however, wearing a little hat to help her conserve heat."

Tank received a phone call, and he stepped out to take it as I caught a whimper in my throat. I hadn't thought of that before and I worried that Tia wouldn't survive. Having recently suffered from hypothermia myself, I was particularly sensitive to the concept that Tia was cold and suffering. Gabriel put his hand down and squeezed my shoulder in solidarity.

"As I'm sure you noticed", said Ranger, "the security system here is abysmal. It is not a locked-down unit and there is only one camera on the floor. It is located at the elevators and has luckily provided us with an image of the woman. We also did a search of all patients, and we found that a patient on the psych floor had disappeared. When we showed the picture to the staff, they confirmed that the missing patient was the person who had taken Tia.

"The psych patient, Yvette Marley, delivered a baby boy three months ago. Her baby was only twenty-six weeks along, and he died shortly after birth. Unfortunately, Yvette's husband also died in a car accident the same day, and the two tragedies have pushed Yvette over the edge. She is psychotic and doesn't believe that her son has died. The current theory is that she has walked off with Tia thinking that Tia is her own baby. The good news is that she likely will try to take care of Tia. The bad news is that she likely is unable to care for herself, let alone a premature baby.

"Miguel and Dirk are currently creating a dossier on Yvette, and will soon have put together a complete history. When we have identified her home and the places that she might be found, I'll want to take the two most likely places and send an ERT team to each. Morelli will send along police staff as well, and we'll dispatch an ambulance to each location with a bottle of milk. The paramedics can then wrap her up to keep her warm and feed her some milk prior to returning to the hospital."

"While we wait", said Morelli, "I have staff contacting the various taxi companies to search through passengers picked up at the hospital. The security cameras have caught Yvette leaving the hospital in her hospital gown, with no shoes or bags, carrying a squalling baby. You can see Tia crying in the feed as Yvette left."

"And they just let her go?" said Hal. He looked furious. His expression was mirrored on every man's face.

"Security saw her leaving and, in fact, one guard helped her call a taxi. He does not remember which company responded to the call", said Ranger. "He did not question the fact that she was carrying a four-pound baby, or the fact that she was leaving the hospital without shoes and wearing a hospital gown or even that the baby wasn't in an infant car seat. As I said, the security guards are ill-trained and remarkably incompetent. A formal complaint will be going into the hospital board when this is over. That is, however, not our primary focus right now. Our primary focus is getting Tia back in a timely fashion."

Tank stepped into the room. "Although we don't have a complete dossier pulled together yet, Miguel and Dirk have identified a couple of places to look. I know that we are trying to find out where a taxi driver could have taken Yvette, but in the meantime we are getting initial results from Miguel and Dirk, and I think we should start searching. Steph? Ranger? What do you want to do? I think that, if you come, you should be there for support rather than to lead the team." He looked at Ranger. "You are doing a good job remaining calm, but you cannot remain objective and you could make mistakes that could result in Tia being killed."

Ranger nodded, but he looked frustrated when he did it.

I looked at Ranger, and then I looked at Tank. "I've only pumped one bottle of milk. What I think makes the most sense is that we send the bottle of milk to our second most likely location, and Ranger and I go to our first most likely location. Ranger and I will wait with the paramedics, but we'd be on hand to feed Tia as soon as we get her."

"Hector, Raphael", said Ranger, "keep in contact with each other. Hal, go with Hector's team to the second location with the bottle of milk. Raphael, go with Tank, Steph and me to the first location. Hopefully we will find Yvette and Tia with this first go around."

"In the meantime", said Morelli, "I'll have a team go with each of your teams to the two locations, and I'll continue to have a team contacting the various taxi companies to try to locate the suspect. When you find her, remember that she could be armed and dangerous, and she is not in full possession of all her faculties. This means that she is erratic and will not necessarily choose the logical choice."

"Hal, did you bring ear buds with you?" said Tank.

"I did", said Hal. "I brought them all, which means that I have about thirty. This gives us one for each ERT member, Tank, Ranger, Steph, Morelli, his two team leads, and me. I don't have enough for the various police players." He turned to the Rangeman staff. "I notice everyone is wearing your police Kevlar like Tank asked. Thank you for that. We are representing the police today." All ERT staff had plain Kevlar for times when they were on patrol or out in public. However, they also separate Kevlar outfits identifying them as working with the police. They had represented the police several times, and had worn their police Kevlar each time.

"ERT1", said Hal, "use channel one on your ear buds. ERT2, use channel two. Ranger and Steph and Tank will monitor all channels. Jorge is coordinating everything from the control room."

Ranger turned to Livy and Gabriel and Amelia. "You're with Steph and Tank and me." He turned to the nurse. "As Steph gets dressed into street clothes, could you please retrieve the bottle of milk and figure out a way of keeping it warm but safe for Tia to drink?"

The nurse hustled away, and I got out of the bed. I removed my clothes from the drawer, walked into the bathroom, and shut the door. I took a minute to breathe the way that Livy had taught me as I tried to get my panic under control. I then took off the hospital gown and put on the pants and shirt that I had worn to the hospital less than a day before.

I walked out. The Rangeman teams were putting in ear buds, and Ranger came across and handed me one. I flicked the switch to the all-channel option that would let me hear what was being said on all both channel one and channel two, and inserted it into my ear.

The nurse came over to us with a small thermal bag. "I'd be available to go as well, if you want", she said. "That way I'd be available to monitor Stephanie and would be on hand to help with Tia when we find her."

"Thank you", said Ranger. "We'll take you up on that."

"The TPD has arranged with the Trenton Public Transit system to bring two buses to the hospital, one to go to each location", said Morelli. "They should be waiting outside right now."

"Where are we going?" said Hector.

"Raphael, you are going to the Yvette's house", said Tank. "Hector, you are going to Yvette's work. I know it's a long shot, but it is better to clear it as an option than it is to wait around and do nothing." He paused. "Good luck, gentlemen."


	6. Chapter 6

It didn't take long until we were at Yvette's house. It was a neglected-looking duplex. The lawn had not been mowed this year, and the curtains were all drawn against the sun. There were no cars in the driveway, and newspapers had piled up outside the front door. Tank sent staff to the rear of the house to look in windows as he walked up to the front door to ring the doorbell. He rang it a few times as staff tried to see past the curtains in the front of the house.

Minutes later, Eduardo opened the door. "The back door was 'open'", he said, "so we just came in. There is something dead here. The flies are thick and the stink of death is in the air."

I sobbed once, and Ranger put his arm around me. "Babe, it's not Tia. Tia wouldn't have been dead long enough to warrant flies."

I nodded once and breathed deeply.

Tank pointedly looked at Ranger in a non-verbal command to stay put, and he entered the building. Several minutes later, he came out and over to us. "They had a cat", he said, "and the cat died a long time ago. There are no traces of Tia or Yvette being in the house recently."

I caught my breath as I heard Hal and Raphael clear Yvette's work location. Like Tank, they didn't find any traces of Yvette or of Tia.

We turned to Morelli as he talked to the police. "One of my teams might have found someone who had driven someone matching the description. We are currently looking into it", he told us.

My heart leapt. "Let's go."

"Babe, we need to know where we are going before we leave", said Ranger.

I guess I looked as frantic as I felt, as Gabriel said, "while we wait, why don't we go into the bus and have a check-in. Livy and I can do couples therapy, and perhaps we can help you deal with your feelings and your panic."

"That's a good idea", said Ranger as he looked at me. He could feel me shaking with fatigue. "If nothing else, I think it would be good for Steph to get off her feet."

Tank patted me on the shoulder as he turned to his crew. "Give Ranger and Steph a few minutes on the bus, and work with the TPD team to clear the house."

Ranger put his hand to the small of my back and guided me onto the bus. He sat down beside me and Gabriel and Livy sat down opposite us.

"If you had to use one word to describe how you feel, what would it be?" said Gabriel.

Ranger turned to me. "Panicked", I said. "Tia is so little and so vulnerable. What are the chances that she is alright? She needs special care, and I'm terrified that we'll find her too late."

"Okay, Ranger, how do you feel?"

"I can't describe it in one word. Although I feel a bit of panic, I am more focused on getting Tia back and doing what I can to make sure we get her back quickly and without bloodshed. I am terrified for Tia's safety and I'm terrified for what this will mean for Steph. She has worked so hard at giving Tia the best start to life as possible. I guess the best description, however, would be focused. I will deal with the terror and other feelings later, after we get Tia back."

"You're repressing your panic."

"I have to. I'd go insane otherwise, and Tia and Steph need me right now. I can break down after it is all over."

"Can you tell me a bit more about the terror you feel?" said Gabriel to me.

"I feel frantic about Tia's welfare and am panicked about her safety. There's a little part of me, though, that thinks that I deserve this." I could feel Ranger tense beside me.

"You deserve this?" said Gabriel. "Can you tell me a bit about that?"

"Everything was going perfectly in my life. I'm married to the most wonderful man in the world for me. I have a fabulous job working at the best company in Trenton. I had a baby that, despite being born six weeks early, was healthy. I had it all, and people like me don't deserve to be happy." I swiped some tears away from my face.

"Is this your sister's voice talking again?" said Livy softly. My sister, Val, and I had a long history of sibling rivalry. We were both fairly competitive in nature, and we both wanted to be the best. However, Val was the undisputed winner in most categories. She was the prettiest, the smartest, the most athletic, and the best mother. In school, she had been the head cheerleader and won a scholarship to college. In comparison, I had been kicked off the baton twirler's club when my baton flew into the tuba, and despite trying was barely accepted to Douglass College. I hadn't excelled in anything compared to Val, and had given up trying. After years of competing, I decided that I would be happier if I just accepted that I wasn't as good as Val or as valuable as Val.

However, Val hadn't given up the competition and, when I settled down with Ranger and became pregnant, her jealousy and competitive nature came to the forefront. It didn't help that Val had crushed on Ranger in the past, and I had found out that it was an infatuation that she wasn't over. Through it all, she had made several comments that I didn't deserve all the good things that were happening in my life. She said that she couldn't understand why, when she had done everything right and I was a perpetual screw-up, that she was married to a bumbling lawyer while I got to marry the smart and successful businessman. She reiterated all the things that I had felt about myself in the past, and I'd been struggling with all the feelings of inadequacy that dealing with Val were bringing up.

"I guess so", I said.

"One of the reasons family is important", said Livy, "is to reflect your own thoughts and feelings back at you in a safe environment. Your family feeds into your self-image. Val has consistently told you that you were inferior. Your mother seemed to buy into that view, and your family catered to your sister. You absorbed those lessons and began to think of them as true. However, in recent conversations with your mother you have realized that your mother doesn't believe in your supposed inferiority. Your father never did and has always spent a lot of time with you. And your grandmother, although flighty, enjoys spending time with you and loves you very much as well. The only people, in fact, that believe that you are inferior and don't deserve good things in life are Val…and you." She turned to Ranger. "Do you think that Steph is inferior?"

Ranger looked in shock at her. "Hell, no. Val is a jealous cow who can't cope with the fact that Steph has earned her right to be on the pedestal. Val has placed herself on that pedestal and doesn't want to share the position, and she'll do whatever she can to knock Steph off. However, in my view, Steph is far more valuable a person than Val. She is definitely more interesting and more loving, and she is more compassionate and less judgmental. I love Steph. I put up with Val."

"What Ranger says is important", said Livy to me. "Remember that what the people around us think reflects who we are as a person, and what I hear from Ranger is that you are a valuable person and that you deserve good things in life. The only person, in fact, that doesn't reflect your value is Valerie and, because she is the only person who doesn't think of you as being valuable, you have to question her view and decide as to whether it is accurate."

"Whenever you think of yourself as being worthless and question your own value", said Gabriel, "you have to take that idea for a test drive and try to come up with proof to support it. I suspect that, if you did that, you wouldn't be able to find any proof to support your belief that you are worthless, but you would be able to find a lot of proof to support the thought that you are a very valuable person and are someone that deserves all good things in life."

I swiped tears away from my face, and Ranger's hand came up under my hair to massage the tight muscles at the base of my neck. He dragged me onto his lap and held me securely, and they all waited until the storm of tears had passed and I was no longer shaking with emotion.

"Babe, I love you, okay?" said Ranger. "Te amo. Te amo mucho. I love you so much."

"What happens if this is my fault? What happens if it was just that I was too happy?"

"That doesn't made sense", said Gabriel. "Tia's disappearance is because a very sick woman believes that Tia is hers and has taken her somewhere. It has nothing to do with whether you are happy or not. They are two completely different things and are in no way related to each other."

"It's like we said the other day", said Livy. "You have worked hard to ensure that Tia is given the best start to life as possible. You have cared for her and have proven to be a good mother. You are a good person, a valuable person, and you deserve to have some time to get to know your baby and experience that joy of being with her. There isn't one person out there who doesn't believe that. Those are the people who you have to listen to. Don't listen to the one naysayer in the bunch. Be true to yourself."

"But if I am true to myself, I would know that I was worthless."

"And that's what you have to challenge", said Gabriel.

"It just seems so hopeless."

"How long have you been feeling hopeless and worthless?" said Gabriel.

"I don't know", I said. I struggled not to cry again.

"Can I answer that?" said Livy.

I nodded.

"Steph has been fighting depression ever since she started talk therapy with me two months ago", she said. "When she started going into labor early, she thought of herself as worthless for not being able to carry the baby to term. Feelings of hopelessness and guilt have crept in. She has been struggling to keep her head above water. Stephanie felt very strongly that she didn't want to go on medication although we have talked several times about it in the last month. She was afraid that the medication would affect the baby. We've been keeping an eye on things but were hoping that the birth would lift her spirits and would let her get above her negative feelings."

"You're crying, Stephanie", said Gabriel. "Why are you crying?"

I sniffled a few times as they all waited. "I just feel like such a failure", I whispered. "I pride myself on being positive and being able to find the good in life, but I can't find any happy in me lately. I hate that about myself. Who wants to be around someone who isn't happy?"

"Is that why you are always smiling, even when your eyes are sad?" said Ranger. He smoothed my hair away from my face rhythmically, and I buried my face in his shoulder. I nodded. "Babe, I want to know when you are sad just as much as I want to know when you are scared or when you are happy."

"But you've been dealing with so much of your own. You don't need to be dealing with my stupid worries as well."

"Babe, they aren't stupid worries. I want to know."

I shuddered in a breath, and Ranger held me securely with one hand and rubbed my back with the other.

"Okay", said Gabriel. "Your depression is something we'll keep an eye on as time goes on, but in the meantime let's talk about what is happening now. The fact that Tia was taken has nothing to do with your feelings about yourself. Tia was taken solely because there is a very sick woman out there who has decided that Tia is her child and she wants to take her child home. It was just bad luck for you that it happened to Tia."

"Do you think that she'll be okay?" I said.

"Babe", said Ranger, "we can't think anything else. We have to believe that she'll be okay, or we'll blow our brains out over something that is beyond our control. What we have to remember is that this is not our fault, and we have now been given a set of circumstances that we have to respond to. We'll do it, together. And together, we'll be there for Tia. You have to believe in that."


	7. Chapter 7

Tank stuck his head in the bus. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but we have a location." I tensed up. "Morelli's team came through, and the police have identified a taxi driver who took a woman matching our description to a location on the other side of the city. We're taking both teams to the location and we're going to hit it hard." He paused and looked at my tearstained face. "You okay, Steph?"

I shuddered in another breath. "Yeah", I said.

"Okay. Hang in there. We're getting her back for you."

Tracy stuck her head into the bus. "Both ambulances are going to the new location. I'd like to do a check on Stephanie, and I was thinking that Stephanie and Ranger could travel with me to the new location in the ambulance and I could do a check en route."

I was about to refuse, when Ranger said, "I think that is a good idea."

"We'll talk more later but if you ever want us to listen, remember that we are here for you", said Gabriel. "Livy and I will be here until you find Tia."

Tears came to my eyes again. "Thank you", I said.

I scrambled off Ranger's lap and the bus swayed as I stood too fast. Ranger stood beside me and looked at me. "You okay?" he said.

"Yeah", I said. "I was just a little dizzy for a moment."

"Then let's talk to Tracy and see what she says." He led me from the bus and over to the ambulance, and he helped me inside. He sat down and I sat beside him. The paramedic buckled us into our seats and Tracy hopped up beside us. She sat on the other side of me, and Ranger put his arm around me as he snugged me into his body. "Why didn't you tell me that you were struggling with depression?" he said quietly.

"It wasn't important, and you are dealing with your PTSD. You had your own issues that you were dealing with, and you didn't need my silly thoughts upsetting you."

He kissed me on the side of my head. "Babe, I want to know what you are feeling, even if it isn't happy or positive."

"But you once said that you were attracted to me because I was always so happy."

"Babe, you are a happy person. You are the most optimistic person I know. However, I know that you are two people. You have the face you show everyone. That face is always happy, no matter what. You are always optimistic and you always see the good in people and the good in life. You crack jokes and make people feel good about themselves. However, the person I really want to know is the person you hide from the world. I want to know your secret self, just like I'm showing my secret self to you. To the world, I try to appear as though I am calm and cool and never get upset about anything. I try to be in control all the time. I try to be a good leader, and I try to be fair and just. However, I show you my secret self. I show you my worries and my fears. I tell you about my nightmares, and I know that, with you, I don't have to be strong and pretend that I know what I'm doing. I know that I can tell you anything and you won't look down on me for it. I hope that you feel the same about me."

"I do feel like I can tell you anything. I just didn't want to admit that I was such a failure of a person. After all, every dream I've had is coming true. What kind of person is sad when everything is going well?"

Ranger kissed me on the top of my head. "I want to know, babe, and the ring that you are wearing says that you've given me that right." I turned into his side. "Babe, I love you, and I want to know you, who you really are. Not the person you have decided to show the world, but your secret self that you don't show any other person." I sniffled. "Can you do that, babe? Can you let me in and show me who you really are? Because from everything I've seen, I love that person very much."

"I'm afraid that, if I show you that person, you'll be repulsed and will leave me."

"Babe, you are a selfless person, generous and compassionate. You have more love in your little finger than most people have in their whole bodies. You are a naturally optimistic person who likes to make people laugh. That's who you are, and no amount of negative or sad feelings will change that. You are a good person, Stephanie Plum, and I am proud that you are my wife."

I stayed cuddled into Ranger's side as we took comfort in the other person. The ambulance drove to the next location, and I sniffled as I let the scent of Ranger's Bulgari Green body wash ground me. I had long wondered how Ranger was able to keep the scent of his body wash on his skin so long. But after travelling with him recently and knowing that he didn't have access to his signature body wash – yet also knowing that he still smelled faintly of Bulgari Green, I have since decided that Ranger's natural scent was faintly the same as his favorite body wash.

Ranger sniffed my hair and kissed the top of my head as well, and I think he took comfort in my presence just as much as I was taking comfort in his. When we got to the location, the paramedic parked and opened the back doors as the other paramedic handed Tracy a blood pressure gauge, and he left the ambulance as Tracy said, "I overheard what you were saying about depression. Be aware that depression is quite common after birth. Also be aware that there are antidepressants that you can take that are safe with breastfeeding. There is no shame in being depressed, but it is something that needs to be treated. If you don't, it is harder to develop a tight bond with your child. Take the time to go to talk therapy, and work with your therapist to devise a suitable treatment plan for you."

"Okay", I said.

"When Steph stood up in the bus, she got quite dizzy", said Ranger.

"Steph is pushing her body to the limit, so I'm not surprised to hear that. She probably hasn't slept well in weeks, she arrived at the hospital at four-thirty this morning, so she was up for a long time, and she put herself through one of the toughest workouts known to mankind – and she elected to do it without pain medication. She's exhausted." She took my blood pressure and nodded. "Your pressure is still high, but it isn't any higher than it was when you were in the hospital. That's good. What I'd suggest is for Steph to have a nap on the stretcher for a few minutes." She turned to me. "I know you want to be on hand when your daughter is found, but if you don't get any rest, you won't be able to feed your baby. You'll be too exhausted to make the milk, and you won't be any good to Tia."

"I don't think that I can sleep."

"You don't have to sleep, but it would be good for you to rest. You're holding yourself together with sheer guts and glory, and you need to take a step back and give yourself a break. By doing that, you'll be able to better handle what is thrown your way."

I was about to refuse, but then I looked at Ranger. He looked worried about me, and he didn't deserve to have to worry about me.

"I think that's a good idea, babe", he said.

"You've been up just as long as me."

"I didn't have contractions that made me feel like every bone in my torso was breaking", he said as he thought about smiling. "Get some rest."

I sighed. "I will rest as long as you promise to tell me what is going on and to get me up if it seems like Tia is there. I need to be near her."

"I understand", said Ranger. "I promise that I will get you if there is a reason for it." I looked at him steadily for a moment, and Ranger kissed me on my forehead. "I promise", he said.


	8. Chapter 8

I stretched out on the stretcher. I hated to admit to it, but I was exhausted. Tracy looked at me. "Shut your eyes", she said. "Do you know how to meditate?"

"I'm not great at it, but I've been working at learning how to meditate for the last two months."

"Now is the time to try to meditate to find your balance and, if you fall asleep in the middle of it, then let yourself sleep. I was serious when I said that your body won't produce enough milk if you are too tired, and you need to be able to produce milk. How do your breasts feel? Are they full and sore?"

"They are."

"Then I'll get the bottle from the other ambulance, and we'll try expressing some milk for Tia. If you don't allow your baby to feed frequently, you could develop mastitis and that is a painful condition that you don't want to develop if you don't have to. I'll be back in a minute."

I closed my eyes as Tracy left and let myself relax. I was so tired and so anxious I felt nauseous, and struggled to hold my stomach down. It suddenly occurred to me that I hadn't eaten anything since the night before, and judging by the amount that I had pooped out when I was in labor I didn't think that there was anything left in my body.

I had a headache as well, though, so between my upset stomach, my headache, my fatigue and my anxiety, I was a very unhappy person. Tears came to my eyes again. I was shaky and my emotions were very close to the surface. I didn't know if I was strong enough to withstand the next few hours.

Tracy came back as I swiped away the tears. "It's okay to cry", she said softly. "Tell me how you are feeling?"

I told her all my symptoms, and Tracy turned to the paramedic. It showed how out of it I was that I hadn't even realized that he was there. She asked him for a glucometer, and seconds later she pricked my finger and took a reading.

"Your blood glucose levels are extremely low", she said. The paramedic passed her a glucose drink, and Tracy opened it, waited until I sat up, and handed it to me. "Your low blood sugar is likely the reason that you are feeling as crummy as you are. The anxiety isn't helping, and neither is your exhaustion. I'll see if someone can go out and get some food for you. You'll need to have the food to continue to make milk."

I started to cry again. "I don't want to take anyone away from the search."

"I understand that, but you also need to take care of yourself, or I will ask the paramedics to take you back to the hospital to rest and have someone take care of you." She turned to the paramedic as he put away the glucometer. "I'd like to run an IV of fluids as well. I suspect that Stephanie is dehydrated, and that's another reason that she is as shaky as she is and has such a bad headache. We'll take another reading in about half an hour."

"If you are here", said the paramedic, "I can go across the street to the convenience store and pick up a sandwich for Stephanie. Some protein and carbs would be good to help stabilize her blood sugar. Just make sure that you don't leave without me."

Tracy smiled. "That would be great."

"Talk to Tank before you go", I said. "He's the tall black man who seems to be leading everything."

The paramedic smiled and left, and talked to his partner as he got out of the ambulance. His partner came and sat inside. "Did I hear that you need an IV run?" she said. She got out the supplies and handed them to Tracy, and a few seconds later I was hooked up to a bag of saline.

Ranger stuck his head into the ambulance and turned white. "How are you doing there?" he said. I could hear the tension in his voice.

"Okay. Apparently my blood sugar was low so I've had a glucose drink, and apparently I was dehydrated so I'm now hooked up to an IV. The paramedic has gone across the street to find some food for me."

"Tank asked him to pick up a sandwich and a couple of sports drinks for me as well", said Ranger. "I also have a headache."

"What's happening?" I said. "Is Yvette or Tia here?"

"The short answer is no, they aren't here. We broke into the house and there hasn't been anyone here for a while. The house is owned by her husband's parents. We have just finished talking to the next-door neighbor and she said that the in-laws are in Europe at the moment. They said that Yvette broke into the house – which we saw evidence of – and that when she came she was wearing a hospital gown. The neighbor thought that was quite odd. When she left, she had changed into street clothes. She drove the in-laws' car and left the house. We don't know where she went. Miguel and Dirk are working their angle and we're hoping they come up with something soon."

A wave of panic washed over me, and Ranger hopped in the ambulance and sat beside the stretcher. He picked up my hand and smoothed his thumbs across my palm over and over again. "Breathe", he said quietly. "We can get through this, babe. Tia will be found in enough time. I have faith."

"I've lost my happy, Ranger."

"I know. But there are reasons for that. You are dehydrated and are hypoglycemic. You're exhausted and still recovering from giving birth earlier today. Add in that Tia is missing, and I can understand why you have lost your happy."

"Can't we go somewhere and look for her?"

"Until Miguel and Dirk come up with another location, this is as good a spot as any to wait. Besides, this will allow the paramedic to return with our food."

The paramedic arrived back with a large plastic sack filled with food. He smiled at everyone in the ambulance. "I bought some sandwiches, some meat sticks, some Tastykakes, and some ice cream. I thought that the sandwiches would be good for maintaining blood sugar, and the ice cream would be good for raising your blood sugar quickly. The meat sticks and the Tastykakes are for a snack for if this goes much later."

"Thank you", said Ranger. He dug in the bag and pulled out two sandwiches. One was a ham and swiss, while the other was a roast beef and provolone. He handed the ham and swiss to me and took the roast beef for himself. He knew that ham and swiss was one of my favorite sandwiches, which was good because roast beef was one of Ranger's.

I ate my sandwich quickly and turned to Ranger. He smiled and handed me the bag of food, and I grinned and removed two small tubs of ice cream. One was butter pecan. The other was white chocolate raspberry truffle. I looked at Ranger as he finished his sandwich. "What kind do you want? I like both." Ranger smiled and took the butter pecan from my hands. "Oh, no. That's the one that I wanted." I laughed when I saw Ranger's look of consternation. "It's okay. I'm teasing. If I was going to pick one, I would have picked the white chocolate raspberry truffle one anyway. With the raspberries in it, it's healthy."

I handed him a spoon as Ranger laughed. "Actually, since the goal of eating the ice cream is to increase our blood sugar, this is healthy as well."

I smiled and pulled the lid and tamper-seal from my tub. I dug a spoon into the creamy goodness. "There is always something good about everything." I sighed as I ate my first mouthful. "This is the first bit of happy food that I've had in a while."

"That's true. You haven't been eating desserts because you were worried about how much weight you were gaining", said Ranger.

"But you had preeclampsia", said Tracy. "Weight gain is part of it. How much weight did you gain in total?"

"Forty-two pounds", I said. "I had only wanted to gain thirty, so I was a little upset about it."

"You did well to curb it at forty-two", said Tracy. "When were you diagnosed with preeclampsia?"

"Ten weeks ago."

"You've done well at protecting your baby, and to give her the best start she could have in life. She didn't show any signs that you suffered from preeclampsia. She was healthy and strong, and you didn't need to be induced and your body didn't start shutting down. You are a success", said Tracy.

"Thank you", said Ranger as he gestured to Tracy with his spoon. "I've been saying that to Steph all along."


	9. Chapter 9

A half hour later, Miguel phoned and Tank joined us in the ambulance. He put the phone on speaker as Morelli came and stood just outside the doors. "Hey, Miguel", I said as I heard his voice.

"Hey, chica. How are you holding up?"

"Been better, but I'm trying not to think about things too intensely. Please tell me that you have something."

"I have a couple of places for you to try. One is Yvette's mother's house. Her mother died six months ago, and the house was deeded to Yvette. Yvette was an only child."

"What is the other place?" said Ranger.

"The other place is her husband's brother's place. I have sent addresses and, in the case of the brother's place, names and contact numbers, to Tank's phone. I wanted to get that to you as soon as I could. Dirk and I will keep digging, but in the meantime you could check it out. I was going to call the brother and his wife myself, but somehow I thought you'd want to do it personally."

"Thanks, Miguel", said Ranger. "We owe you and Dirk one for all this work that you are doing for us."

"Just bring Tia home safe and sound, and we'll consider it even."

"We're trying our best", said Tank. "We'll keep you informed as to what is going on."

"Thanks. I'd appreciate it", said Miguel.

We said goodbye and hung up the phone, and Tank clicked into his email app. "I think", he said as he turned to us, "that Morelli should call. Having the TPD title of detective will go much farther than it would for just one of us calling."

"I will", said Morelli. "What's the number?"

Tank told him what the number was, and Joe pulled out his phone and dialed the brother-in-law. "Hello", he said. "May I please speak to Michael Marley?" He waited a minute. "Hi, Mr. Marley. I'm Detective Joseph Morelli from the Trenton Police Department. I understand that Yvette Marley is your sister-in-law?" He listened. "Have you seen her recently?" He listened again, and he looked at us and shook his head. "I don't know if you have been following the news, but there is a missing infant from the hospital nursery, the same hospital that Yvette was staying in. We have her on video walking into the nursery and taking a premature baby out of her bassinet. We have her on security camera walking out of the hospital carrying the baby, and catching a taxi. The taxi company has reported that Yvette took the taxi to your parents' house, where she broke in and changed out of her hospital gown and stole your parents' car. She is now on the move. The baby was born six weeks early and is unable to maintain a constant body temperature. She hasn't been fed in over six hours and is likely dehydrated and starving. She needs proper care, and she will not get it outside the hospital. As you can imagine, we need to get your sister-in-law back into the hospital for treatment and the baby back into the hospital for specialized care. If you hear from Yvette, could you please call me? And if she shows up, could you please call me and keep her onsite until we get there?" He paused a few more seconds. "I'm more interested in getting her back into the hospital again so that she can get proper treatment. She's not well." He listened a few more minutes. "I can't comment on that." He paused. "I'll pass your wishes along." He gave his number. "Please call me if you can think of anything at all that could be of help. We are working against the clock, and we need to find that baby as soon as possible." He got off the phone and looked at us. "The bad news is that they haven't seen or heard from Yvette. They were concerned about her being out of the hospital as they know how sick she has been. They were horrified by the thought that she had taken a baby, and he said that he'd be praying for both Tia and Yvette."

"Okay", said Ranger. "Let's all go to the other location, and we'll check whether Tia and Yvette are there."

"Stephanie needs to express more milk", said Tracy. "Perhaps she can do that while she is en route to the next location."

"I'll stay with Stephanie in the ambulance", said Ranger.

Joe made a face. "If you are expressing milk", said Morelli, "I'll take a bus." I laughed.

Everyone left other than Tracy and Ranger. The paramedic strapped me to the stretcher as the other paramedic closed the back of the ambulance up. Tracy reached down into the thermal bag and took out the warm bottle of breast milk. I took off my top and, when Tracy handed me the bottle, I expressed some milk the way that she had taught me.

I sighed as I took the pressure off. "Better?" said Tracy with a smile.

"Yes", I said with a groan. "I had never realized that expressing milk would feel so good."

Tracy laughed.

"I just wanted to say thank you", I said. "I know you didn't have to come be with us and that you probably aren't getting paid for it, but I greatly appreciate you being here."

Tracy smiled. "That's okay. I'm single, so I didn't have anyone expecting me at home and, if I had gone home, I know myself well enough to know that I would have just worried about you. It was better to come and actually be on hand to support you in the event that a nurse was needed."

"For some reason", I said, "I think that we'll find Tia here." I did up my bra again and pulled my shirt back over my head.

"I hope you are right, babe", said Ranger. "I have to say that I have never seen the appeal of an Easter egg hunt and that's what this is like."

"I love Easter egg hunts", I said with a smile. "Of course, they involve chocolate, and any holiday that involves getting free chocolate, a holiday that you don't even have to be good to get the chocolate like you do for Christmas, is always a good holiday to me."

Ranger smiled.

"We haven't called the families for an hour or so. We should call them with an update."

Ranger groaned. "Thank you for taking point in talking to the families. You've really allowed me to focus on the search."

"I know, but I think your family would be glad to hear your voice. I've talked to them about four times already. I've called them every hour since we first found Tia missing."

"How are they doing?"

"They're worried. They're worried about Tia, they're worried about me and they're very worried about you. They are worried about what another kidnapping will do to your peace of mind."

"Another kidnapping?" said Tracy.

"Tia is my second daughter", said Ranger. "My first daughter is thirteen years old. When she was eleven, she was kidnapped by someone who was trying to steal my identity. In trying to steal my identity he kidnapped my daughter and then kidnapped Steph to try to create the perfect family. Only, Steph and Julie didn't want to stay kidnapped. The upshot was that the identity thief shot me, luckily not fatally, and my daughter shot the kidnapper, unfortunately fatally."

"My God! Was she okay?"

"She was. Her mother took her to therapy sessions for a while, but Julie seems to have bounced back from the trauma of what she went through quite well."

"How are you doing with another kidnapping then?" said Tracy.

"Honestly?" said Ranger. "I am barely holding it together and it is only years of being on missions with the strong potential for things to go sideways that is allowing me to stay focused. I'm worried about Tia, I'm worried about Steph, I'm worried about Julie and how it will affect her and whether it will bring up memories of her own kidnapping. I was already having nightmares after Steph got shot in December, and this isn't going to help matters."

Tracy turned to me. "You got shot?" she said faintly.

"Occupational hazard", I said. "It's been a tumultuous pregnancy. At the end of November I was kicked in the stomach by someone who was trying to kidnap me, and I started to bleed. I was put on complete bedrest for the next ten days. Then, three weeks later, I was in a bank when it was robbed, and I was shot twice. I was wearing my bulletproof jacket though, and only received a couple of broken ribs and some bone bruises. In January a gang was trying to kill me because of some work that I was doing. However, my bodyguard was shot in the shoulder instead. In February, my hand was stabbed and in March I was locked in a freezer and suffered from hypothermia. It seems that I've been rolling from one disaster to another in the last nine months and we had hoped that things would settle down now that I was off on maternity leave. However, we are now dealing with this." Tears came to my eyes again.

"My God! No one should ever have to deal with any one of those events, let alone all of them. It's no wonder that you were suffering from high blood pressure. I can see why your doctor put you on complete bed rest."

"He put me on partial bed rest after we discovered that Julie was being stalked by a pedophile in February, and when I was locked in the freezer he put me on complete bed rest. That was when we discovered that I had a mild case of preeclampsia. However, despite being on complete bed rest, I had to deal with my Uncle Arnie coming back from the dead in April."

"Pardon me?"

"My Uncle Arnie died at the end of January. However, in April my grandmother saw him and she's a sensationalist. She thought this made a good story, so she contacted me to ask me to prove that Uncle Arnie was alive. I thought it was a wild goose chase but, because dealing with my grandmother made my blood pressure rise, we decided to let someone from my staff look into matters. He discovered, to our surprise, that my uncle was really alive. We then turned it over to the police and Joe exhumed the body and proved that my uncle wasn't in the coffin. My uncle and aunt, and the coroner and funeral home director who had perpetuated the crime, were arrested for insurance fraud."

"I can't believe that all those things happened to you."

"My obstetrician said that talking to me is like watching a soap opera. I always had a traumatic situation and a story to tell."

Tracy laughed. "If your grandmother is a sensationalist, how does she react to your various situations?"

"I've had to distance myself from my grandmother. She has a way of making a bad situation worse. I grew up in the Burg, a close-knit community that is characterized by a love of gossip. My grandmother is the gossip queen and, if she doesn't have anything to gossip about, she makes things up. If she doesn't think that a story is interesting enough, she embellishes it a little here and a little there until it is shocking and will garner her attention. For instance, when I was locked in the freezer she told everyone my nose broke off in the cold. When I developed high blood pressure, we didn't want to let her know because we knew she'd tell everyone that I had suffered a stroke. Discovering that Uncle Arnie wasn't dead was like a gift to her. In her stories, she was the person who had spearheaded the quest to see if he was alive.

"But her stories don't always have to do with what has happened in my life. When she doesn't have something like that to talk about, she makes up other things. She told everyone that I was gang-raped by five men and was expecting five babies. She told everyone that Ranger was the son of an Arab prince. She told everyone that Ranger and Detective Morelli, who is a good friend, were gay and I was a surrogate mother and expecting their baby. Although she prefers to create stories about me, she also creates stories about my sister. She told everyone that my sister had sex with an alien and that's why she was pregnant her fifth time. She told everyone that my three-year old and two-year old nieces were twins that were just born a year apart. And those are just the stories that she has created in the last year. There are a lot of people that believe her as well, so it makes it a little uncomfortable to talk to people in the area."

"Don't you get upset about the stories? I mean, you seem pretty calm about it all."

"I get very upset about the stories. As you can tell, my life doesn't need sensationalizing. It's already upsetting enough. Because of my grandmother's spread of mostly-fictitious gossip, we found that my blood pressure would spike when we had to deal with my grandmother. I have largely stayed away from her for the past ten weeks because of it. Of course, I've been staying away from my sister as well."

"Does your sister make up stories too?"

"No, thank goodness. My sister is competitive, and she is vying for the spot of best daughter and best mother. Add in that she has a crush on Ranger, and it makes for uncomfortable relations. She has five kids and is married to a kind but incompetent lawyer who struggles to put a roof over their heads. She doesn't want to work outside the house and resents that she needs to in order to help support her family. She constantly compares Albert to Ranger. I feel bad for him, because I think she is making him feel that he isn't good enough. I think, based on her recent behavior, that she has developed a drinking problem. However, she somehow believes that she would be a better wife to Ranger, and she believes that she is a better mother since she didn't have any problems with any of her pregnancies." I swallowed hard. "She's another person that we didn't tell of the preeclampsia."

Ranger reached over and clasped my hand. "I've told you before and I'll tell you again. I put up with Val and don't particularly like her very much. I think she's a terrible mother who is so focused on her kids that she is putting unnecessary pressure on them to be perfect. She's whiny and self-centered, and she lacks your ability to take a bad situation and see the good in it. In comparison, I love you. You are selfless and would do anything to help out another person. Everybody loves you and you always see the good in people. You are brilliant and resourceful, and you don't get lost in the weeds of negativity. You are humble, have a great sense of humor, and are compassionate and giving. I have chosen you, out of all the women out there, to be my wife, and I will never take it for granted that you accepted. Eres la luz de mi vida. You are the light of my life. Te amo. I love you."

Tears came to my eyes. "Yo también te amo. I love you too."


	10. Chapter 10

By the time we arrived at Yvette's mother's house, I was floating on a sea of exhaustion. Tracy and Ranger had decided to be quiet for the remainder of our ride in the hopes that I would nap. Ranger continued to hold my hand, and I felt comforted that he was there with me.

I snapped awake, however, when we got to the destination. The paramedic opened the door and Ranger hopped out. I turned to Tracy. "Detach me from the saline drip", I said. "I have to go with Ranger."

"I don't think that's a good idea", said Tracy.

"You can either detach me or I can rip it out of my arm, but I am going with Ranger to get our daughter."

Tracy detached me, but left the needle in so that she could reattach me easily to another IV bag. "Take it easy", she said. "Remember that you just gave birth nine hours ago."

"I know, but my daughter needs me."

Tracy and the paramedic helped me out of the ambulance, and I hurried to Ranger's side to watch what was going on. The house was a single home with an unkempt yard. It very obviously wasn't lived in. Rangeman staff walked to the back of the house as Tank approached the front door. He rang the doorbell, but no one answered. He rang it again, but no one answered.

Eduardo's voice came over our ear pieces. "There isn't a car in the garage", he said.

"She's in there", I said. "I know she is."

Tank pulled out his lock picks and seconds later was entering the house. Rangeman staff poured through the doors and searched the building, but ten minutes later they came out shaking their heads.

"NO!" I said. "They're wrong. She's in there."

"Babe, nobody found traces of her there", said Ranger.

I burst into tears. "She's in there", I said.

Ranger pulled me into a hug. "We'll clear the house again, but she isn't in there."

The men flowed into the house again and searched everywhere, and came out a few minutes later shaking their heads again.

I broke away from Ranger and ran into the house. I was sobbing and in pain from moving so fast. Ranger followed me. I was frantic. "I have to search for her", I said. "She's in here."

"Shh, babe", said Ranger. "We'll search for her together."

I shuddered in a breath and swiped the tears away from my face.

We decided to start at the top floor and work our way down. We went into the first room and cleared it. We looked in closets and under the bed. We looked in dresser drawers and in every single crevice in the room. "Okay, babe?" said Ranger when we finished looking.

"Okay." We walked into the next bedroom and did the same thing. When we found no traces of Tia, a great well of despair washed up and over me. I shuddered in another breath.

We went into the third room, and I just knew. I walked over to the dresser and opened up all the drawers. In the bottom drawer was Tia. She was so still. I let out a cry, and Ranger sprung over to my side. "She's alive", he said as he lifted her carefully. "Her skin wouldn't be as pink as it is if she wasn't alive. Let's get her to Tracy."

I took comfort in that as we hustled as fast as we could out of the house, and a cheer went up when we emerged with our bundle. Tracy ran over and escorted us to the ambulance. "Let's feed her first", she said. "Start by feeding her what is in the bottle. She might be too dehydrated and sick to suck, but we'll do our best. Steph, take off your top. We want that skin-to-skin contact that will be reassuring to Tia, and it will help warm her up. We'll wrap blankets around you as well to keep you warm."

Tears were flowing down my cheeks and snot was mixing with the tears. I stripped my top off and sat in the ambulance. Ranger passed the baby to me as Tracy got the bottle of milk out, and he jumped up beside me. The paramedic wrapped a blanket around the two of us as I carefully held Tia, and Ranger looked outside. "Tell the men that they did a good job", he said to Tank and Morelli, "but that the job isn't done. We have to find Yvette before she steals another baby. I'm going back to the hospital now, but I am keeping our hospital room designated as command central and I want regular updates as to what is going on."

"Sure thing, Ranger. You okay, Steph?" said Tank.

"Ask me when I find out if Tia is okay", I said.

"Fair enough."

"Please keep me updated as to her condition and I'll pass the information along", said Morelli. "I need to know that she is okay."

"I know, Joe. We'll let you know what is going on here if you let us know what is going on there", said Ranger.

"Every single one of us is rooting for you", said Tank.

The paramedics shut the doors of the ambulance and, as they put their sirens on, they screamed away from the house and to the hospital.

As we drove, I brushed the nipple across Tia's bottom lip as Tracy pulled out a stethoscope and listened to her heart. Tia wasn't interested in feeding though.

"She's so cold", I said.

"We got to her just in time", said Tracy. "Her heartbeat is slow and her pulse is weak. I'm going to run an IV. Let's put her down on the stretcher." I carefully placed her on the gurney and the paramedic handed Tracy the supplies she needed to run an IV. She hooked her up to a saline drip and Ranger pulled me into his body and wrapped his arms around me. Like me, he was focused on Tracy and the steps that she was taking to save our baby's life.

Tracy told me to lie beside Tia, and to let Tia hear my heartbeat and feel my skin. I whispered to her that I loved her, and I kept my arm around her so that she would know that I was with her and taking care of her. Tracy wrapped blankets around us again to try to keep the heat in.

The ambulance screamed into the ambulance bay at the hospital and the paramedics quickly got me out of the ambulance. "To emergency?" they said to Tracy.

"No", she said. "To the nursery. The staff will better know what to do, and the specialized equipment that the staff will need is all up there."

"Okay", said the paramedics. "We don't know the way."

Tracy directed them as we went down hallways and up the elevator. Minutes later, Tracy was lifting Tia and putting her in the bassinet. The nurses paged the on-call pediatrician, and there was a flurry of activity around her bassinet. Tracy reported on what she had found using all sorts of medical terms, and I climbed off the stretcher. "Thank you", I said to the paramedics.

"Good luck", they said. "We're rooting for you."

I smiled.

Ranger wrapped his arms around me from behind as we stood to the side of the nursery and watched what was going on. The doctor came running in and did an exam, and Tracy listened to the heartbeat again and reported on what she was observing. We heard snippets of their murmured conversation. Snippets like 'heartbeat getting stronger' and 'pulse rate coming up'. I sagged in Ranger's arms in relief.

The doctor came over to us. "Your daughter is a fighter", he said. "Apparently things didn't look good for her when she was found, but the prognosis is much better now. She is severely dehydrated and her diaper is barely wet, so we are pumping fluids into her. Her core temperature is low, so we have her on the heated bed to warm her up. Her heartbeat is increasing and her pulse rate is getting stronger with the fluids we are pumping in. When she isn't so dehydrated, we'll try her again on feeding. We may have to breastfeed her though. Some babies don't like to be fed from a bottle."

"If she is breastfed, won't it be bad, as she won't be getting the colostrum? After all, I won't be producing colostrum too much longer" I said.

"It's not ideal, but there are many babies that, for whatever reason, aren't breastfed and they grow to be perfectly healthy children and adults."

I blew out a breath.

"We have this well in control", said the doctor. "From what I understand, however, you have been working on sheer guts and glory, and you need to look after yourself. Go rest, and we'll look after Tia for you."

"I don't think that I can leave her alone", I said. I shuddered in a breath.

"I understand, but the nursery is the best place for her", said the doctor.

"Are the bassinets portable?" said Ranger.

"Yes, but they stay in the nursery."

"I want Tia to be cared for in our room. I want Tracy solely looking after Tia and Stephanie, and I want that to happen now. My wife isn't going to rest unless Tia is within our sights, and you know as well as I know that she deserves a rest."

"I don't think we can do that", said the doctor.

Ranger stared at him, and then said very quietly, "I don't think you understand. This hospital, because of its incompetent staff, lax policies and ineffectual security system, let my daughter be kidnapped. We have just gone through the most terrifying seven hours that, quite frankly, no parent should ever have to go through. Our baby is medically in trouble and my wife is traumatized. Now I'm asking you again to move my daughter's bassinet into our labor room and designate Tracy as our private nurse. We trust her and don't want a lot of strangers in our room, and we need to keep the number of new people to a minimum to protect our baby's life and our sanity as parents. If you have a problem with this, I will happily take it up with the hospital administration."

The pediatrician looked at us, and looked at Tia, and then looked back at us again. "Okay", he said. "I can understand why you need that security, and I suspect that it will be better for Tia to be able to hear your voices as well."

I breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you", I said.

We continued to wait to the side as the pediatrician walked over to the nurses surrounding Tia's bassinet. He spoke quietly to them for a minute, then stood back while the nurses unplugged the bassinet from the wall and wheeled the crib towards us. They wheeled it out into the hall and left it for Tracy, and she pushed it along until we got to my room.

Ranger led me to the bed. I was almost comatose with fatigue, and he sat me down on the edge. Tracy handed him a gown, and he stripped off my clothes and dressed me in the hospital wear. Tracy plugged in the baby's bassinet again so that the mattress would continue to heat her, and she turned to me. Ranger bundled me into bed and turned to a worried Tracy. "She's crashing and needs to sleep for a few hours."

"Let me take her blood pressure", she said. "I also want to check her stitches to make sure that she hasn't pulled anything with her run into the house."

She stripped off my underwear and replaced the pad and checked the stitches. "Everything looks good", she said. I could see Ranger breathe a sigh of relief.

She affixed the blood pressure cuff on my arm and took my pressure. "It's high", she said, "but I'm not surprised. We'll check in another few hours. In the meantime, I'd suggest that you both have a nap."

"I'm going to call one our staff bodyguards, Amelia, to come and help guard the baby. Between Amelia and me, the baby will be well protected and one of us will always be available to guard her. In the meantime, why don't you take a nap? I'm too wound up to take a nap myself, and I can watch over my family while you sleep. If something looks a little concerning, I'll wake you up."

Tracy yawned. "Are you sure you won't mind? I'm going on twenty-four hours of being awake, and I'm afraid that I'll make a mistake if I don't get some sleep soon."

Ranger smiled. "I know. There are only so many stresses you can expect your body to handle before it collapses. I'll look after my wife and baby."

I could hear Tracy climb into the other bed that was designated for the father, and sigh as she got comfortable, and as I fell asleep I could hear Ranger pull out his phone and call Tank.


	11. Chapter 11

When I woke up, Amelia was sitting next to the bassinet. Ranger was nowhere to be found, and Tracy was still asleep. "Hey, girlfriend", said Amelia softly. "You did good. Tia is the prettiest baby that I have ever seen."

I smiled sleepily. "Where's Ranger?"

"He stepped out to deal with your grandmother. Apparently he had called everyone while you were sleeping and told them that you were alright but that he didn't want any visitors until you had a chance to get some sleep. He said that everyone was still recovering from the trauma of the day and he didn't want anyone to visit until tomorrow. Your grandmother, however, thought that she was the exception to the rule."

"Of course she did." Amelia smiled at the disgust in my voice. She had met my grandmother in the past, and she had heard even more stories about her. She knew well my frustration with my grandmother's penchant for gossip.

"She called a taxi and came to the hospital without your parents. Ranger stopped her at the door and has called your parents to come and pick her up. He is furious with her and, on top of the stresses of the day, is barely holding his cool. He walked her down to the hospital doors to wait for your parents to pick her up." Amelia smiled. "When he was leaving with her, he told her that, if she came back again before she was invited, he would make sure that she didn't get a chance to see Tia until she entered kindergarten. Even your grandmother could tell that he was furious, and I could tell that your grandmother wasn't sure whether he was serious."

"Good. My grandmother has an incapability to understand that she causes problems, and that her pushiness isn't appreciated. She is just being nosy and wanting to be the first person to see Tia."

"How are you feeling?"

"A bit better. I think it is time to try feeding Tia. My breasts feel very full and swollen."

"I'll wake Tracy."

"How long were we asleep?"

"Three hours."

"No wonder I'm so uncomfortable."

Amelia smiled, then gently shook Tracy's shoulder. Tracy woke up quickly. "Steph thinks that it would be a good idea to try to feed Tia."

"Who are you?"

"I'm Amelia. I'm Tia's bodyguard and will be her nanny."

Tracy smiled. "I think having a bodyguard is a good idea." Amelia laughed. "How long was I asleep?" said Tracy.

"About three hours."

"Thank God. I was exhausted. How is Tia doing?"

"She seems to be doing well", said Amelia.

Tracy got out of the bed and pulled out her stethoscope. She assessed Tia, then turned to me and smiled. "I said that she was a miracle baby when she was born. She seems to have recovered well from her ordeal. I'm sure the pediatrician will want to continue to observe her for the next day or two, and will keep her here until she can maintain her own temperature, can suck and swallow, and is pooping regularly. We already know that she is breathing well on her own, but I suspect that the hospital administration will want to be especially careful with her."

I grinned.

"Now let's check you." She went to the door and closed off the room. She took my vitals and checked my stitches. "Everything looks good", she said.

Ranger opened the door and walked in. "How are you doing?" I said.

Ranger looked extremely pissed off. "I have told your grandmother that, if she shows up early again, our bodyguard will turn her away at the door."

"Thanks, Ranger."

"Sorry, Amelia. I know that you'll get stuck dealing with it, but Edna has to learn that she cannot tell stories and she must respect her loved ones' wishes. She told me that, if she didn't get a chance to see Tia, she would tell everyone that she was born with two heads and the doctors were trying to decide as to which head to keep."

"Crap", I said.

"I told her that, if I heard of her saying such a thing, I would stop her from seeing or holding baby Tia. She said that she was sure that you would have something to say about that, and that I couldn't deny her the chance to see her great-granddaughter. I told her to watch me."

"I'm with you on this", I said. "She has to learn. I mean, after she told everyone that I was gang-raped was bad enough. But if I have people coming up to me and asking whether it was dangerous for the baby to be separated from its second head, and have to field questions as to how we picked the head that we did, I'm not going to be happy."

"I know", said Ranger.

Tracy unhooked the baby from the wires and carried her over to the bed. "Let's undo your gown so that you can nurse the baby, skin-on-skin. Studies have shown that babies who have skin-on-skin contact bond better with their parents and are healthier overall. It's called kangaroo care. It works for fathers as well. If the father has skin-on-skin contact with the baby, there is a better bond between the parent and the child. The skin-on-skin contact is far better at keeping the baby warm, and babies find it easier to breastfeed."

She held Tia to my chest and let me snuggle her for a moment. I rubbed my nipple against the side of her mouth and Tia started rooting and looking for my breast. I inserted my nipple in her mouth and a couple of long minutes later, Tia started to suck. After a few minutes, I burped her and switched sides, but she was no longer interested in latching on.

"That's okay", said Tracy. "She is probably just full. She had a good feed there. Do you want to express some from your other breast to make yourself more comfortable?"

I smiled, and Tracy went to get a fresh bottle from the nursery. When she returned, she said, "to be discharged, Tia will need to be able to feed successfully on a regular basis. The doctor won't let her go until he is assured that Tia will be able to gain weight."

"That makes sense", I said. I turned to Ranger. "If you want to take your shirt off, maybe you could do some skin-on-skin contact. The baby needs to bond with you just as much as she needs to bond with me."

Ranger smiled with relief, and he hurriedly whipped off his top. He arranged himself on the other bed and reclined slightly, and Tracy picked Tia off my chest and placed her on Ranger's. I smiled as he cuddled her. "Hey, Peanut", he said. "You know that your mommy and I love you very much, don't you?" He angled his head down until he could sniff her. "Te amo, peanut." Tears came to his eyes and started to flow down his cheeks.

Amelia got up and touched Tracy on the shoulder. She motioned to Tracy to leave the room, and together they left to give Ranger a bit of time to recover. Ranger shuddered in a breath, and I got out of bed, walked over to Ranger's, and climbed in beside him. I snuggled into his side and kissed his shoulder. "We're all okay", I said softly. "The Rangeman team came through for us again."

"We could have lost her", said Ranger.

"Yes, but we didn't, and that's what we have to focus on. Through the Rangeman and TPD efforts, Tia is okay. You're okay and I'm okay. Tia, when Tracy was checking her, was to all appearances, back to normal and seemed not to have suffered any ill effects from her adventure. I'm as good as can be considering that I delivered a baby earlier this morning. My stitches have held and my blood pressure hasn't risen uncontrollably. It's been a stressful few hours, but everything is good and everyone is safe."

"I could barely cope when I found you suffering from hypothermia in the freezer. I had thought then that you had died. Now, with Tia and finding her in the drawer? It was hard to remember that, if she was pink, she probably wasn't dead. There are only two times in my life that I have panicked, and those are both of them." He paused and sniffled. "If you hadn't insisted that she was in there, we wouldn't have found her. I was only searching with you because I thought you'd have a breakdown if you didn't."

"I know. No matter what, you'll always take care of me."

"That's twice that you've known something about our baby that other people did not know. You knew when she was taken, and you knew where she was located. You seem to have a link to her that I don't have."

"First of all, I think it was luck. But if it wasn't, I think it is because I carried her for the last eight months. I think, with lots of time skin-on-skin with you, that you'll also develop that instinct with her. You have such a strong instinct to start off with. I don't think it will take long for you to develop that bond with her." I paused. "It has certainly worked for us, anyway", I said with a smile. "You have a fabulous instinct when it comes to me, and we've had a lot of skin-on-skin contact."

Ranger smiled. "That's not fair, when I can't touch you for another six weeks."

I kissed his shoulder. "I'm counting down." I paused. "That reminds me of a story. There were two men waiting in the maternity ward's waiting room. One man was sitting on a chair while the other man was pacing anxiously. The man who was sitting looked at the pacing man and said, 'is this your first?' The man replied that it was. The sitting man said, 'this is my eighth. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them.' The pacing man stared at him. 'Why, I do', he said. 'How soon is it after birth that a woman can have sex again?' The man with the eight kids smiled and said, 'that depends upon whether she has a private or a semi-private room'."

Ranger huffed out a laugh.

I sighed.

"You okay, babe?"

"Yeah. Just tired, and with being cuddled into you I'm relaxing in a way that I haven't relaxed since yesterday."

"I needed this too."

"Go to sleep, Ranger."

"What about the baby?"

"You're such a light sleeper that you'll wake up if she hiccups, let alone if she moves."

Tracy and Amelia hesitantly stuck their heads into the room. I smiled at them and motioned them over. "We're going to sleep together with Tia on our chests. Can you watch to make sure she doesn't fall off?"

"Absolutely", said Tracy. "This will be the best thing for Tia."

I smiled. "It will be the best thing for us as well."


	12. Chapter 12

I woke up to Amelia whispering to Ranger. I will still snuggled in to him, and Tia was still snuggled into his chest. "Hey", I said. "How's it going?"

"Tank and Joe and the team are here, and they wanted to come in. We were just trying to figure out how to get Ranger out without waking you up."

I smiled. "I'm awake now."

"It is probably time to check Tia again", said Tracy. "Since she is lightly snoring, we know her breathing is good."

I chuckled. Her snores were so cute.

"How long did we sleep?" I said.

"About an hour", said Amelia.

"Let's put Tia back in her bassinet", said Tracy, "and that way all the men can look at her without overstimulating her. I'm sure that they will all want to see her."

"Every single person that is on the team is a family man", I said. "They have all been excited about this baby and were looking forward to becoming uncles. You'd better believe that they will all want to see her."

Ranger smiled but, as I started to climb out of the bed, he captured me and pulled me to his side. "I've regained a bit of my balance, babe, but I still need you here beside me."

I kissed him on his cheek.

As Tracy finished taking Tia's vitals, she said, "amazing. Everything looks good." She turned to me. "Perhaps you can both go back to the other bed. Not only is it wider, but is has all the equipment there so that I can take Stephanie's vitals and make sure that she is doing well."

I started to scramble out of the bed and Ranger stopped me. He got out of the bed, carried me over to my bed, and carefully put me down. He climbed in until he was sitting beside me, and I snuggled down into his shoulder. Tracy took my vitals. "How is her blood pressure?" said Ranger.

Tracy smiled. "It's still high, but it is coming down. When we were in the ambulance and looking for Tia, it was up to 149/95, but it's now back down to 136/77. I hope that it will continue to decrease as you become more settled and better understand that you are safe and that Tia is safe."

I could feel Ranger's relief as he kissed me on the head and turned to Amelia. "Mellie, if you could tell the men that they can come in now. Just tell them that they have to be relatively quiet. I don't want them disturbing the baby."

Amelia smiled and strode to the door. She stepped outside for a moment and we could hear her voice as she talked to the men, and minutes later they all walked into the room. I watched them come in. Gabriel and Livy were there with the two ERT teams, and there were about ten TPD staff. With the thirty-five people added to the room, everyone was squished in and people were standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

"First of all", said Ranger, "I'd like to thank everyone for all the work that you did today. It was a successful mission. We got Tia back. When we picked her up, she didn't have much longer before she died. However, her recent readings of her vitals show that she has recovered from her adventure and is flourishing the way she is supposed to." There was a collective sigh of relief. "Everyone's quick work and dedication has saved our baby, and I won't forget your efforts. Tank, can you and Morelli do a recap of where we are in the investigation for Yvette?"

"At this point", said Tank, "Yvette is still on the loose. Miguel and Dirk had identified other locations that she might be found, but everybody is tired and needs to go home and catch some shuteye. We are meeting at oh-eight hundred hours tomorrow morning at the Rangeman facility. When we are there, we will divide up the different locations that Dirk and Miguel have found, and send out a team to search each location. I have sent Dirk and Miguel home for the night, but they intend to get to the office at seven tomorrow morning to start the search again. They are sending us locations as they find them, and I will siphon them off to each of the team leads. Hal and I will be working in the control room tomorrow and coordinating our efforts from there. Morelli has some work to do from the hospital here tomorrow. He is dividing the TPD staff so that there are five officers accompanying each ERT team. When we find Yvette, the team leads will contact the control room and Hal and Morelli and I will meet you at the identified location. Hal?"

"If everyone can leave your ear pieces with me, I can disinfect them tonight and charge them up for use tomorrow. Morelli?"

"I also want to thank everyone. Conducting a manhunt is never easy. It's a task that, after hours of frustration, results in hopefully finding the missing person. In this case, the person we are looking for is ill and needs treatment, and because she is ill she is unpredictable. I have left four officers in her mother's house where we found the baby, and we are hoping that she will return to the house. If the officers find her, Tank will let you know tomorrow when you all gather for mobilization." He turned to Ranger. "Is there anything else that you wanted to say?"

"It's late, gentlemen. You did good today, and hopefully tomorrow you'll have an equally as successful day. Thank you, and have a good sleep."

Tank smiled. "Everyone who wants to see Tia, please form a line and you can all file past her bassinet and have a little look."

A smiled bloomed on everyone's face, and they formed a line that extended into the hallway. They slowly walked past the bassinet and all smiled when they saw our daughter. Each man stopped to talk to us for a minute. On the way out, everyone told us how cute she was, and that she was so little, and how happy they were that she was okay. Tia slept through the inspection.

A nurse came into the room. "Who the hell are all these people?" she said. "You can't have that many people visiting at once."

"These people", I said, "are Tia's uncles. They have spent their day searching for her after she was kidnapped out of your nursery, and they luckily found her before she died. They, more than anyone else, deserve to see her and absorb the fact that she is okay."

The nurse looked a bit taken aback, and Tracy put her hand on the woman's arm. "These men, just like Stephanie and Ranger, have been through hell and back today. Let them achieve their peace."

"But it isn't good for the baby", said the nurse.

Tracy smiled. "Does Tia seemed distressed?" She paused. "If you have a problem with this, take it up with the hospital administration. But the last I checked, the hospital administration asked us to do whatever we could to help the Plum family. Of course, my concern is for the baby, but she doesn't seem perturbed and the men are all being quiet. They aren't upsetting anyone. Let them reassure themselves that the baby is okay."

The nurse left in a huff, and I looked at Tracy. "Thank you", I said.

She smiled. "A baby's birth is about far more than the mother and the baby. It's a coming together of families, whether they are adopted like this one, or related, like the family you are seeing tomorrow." She looked around. "Tia is a very lucky person to have as many uncles as she does."

I looked around at the men. Every single one of them would gladly lay down their lives to protect Tia. "Yes, she is", I said.

About fifteen minutes later the men had all filed through, had all had a look at Tia and had all expressed their congratulations to Ranger and me. By the time they had all gone, the only people left were Morelli, Tank, Gabriel, Livy, Amelia and Tracy. "Do you want to hold her?" I said to them.

Tank looked nervous. "She's so little", he said. "What happens if I drop her?"

I smiled. "Tank, you have the steadiest hands that I have ever seen and you have nerves of steel. You can disarm a bomb with thirty seconds remaining on the clock. You can lead teams into battle and withstand torture. I can't believe that you are letting a little person like Tia scare you. You won't drop her."

"Just think of her like a football in a playoff game", said Ranger. "You won't fumble her."

"Sit down, big guy", said Amelia. I smiled as Tank sat. She picked up Tia and carried her over to Tank and plopped her into his arms.

"She's so light", he said.

"She's just over four pounds", said Ranger with pride. "She weighs less than most roasting chickens."

I laughed.

Tank looked at Tia in fascination. "I can't believe how little she is. With my family all living in Virginia, I never saw my nieces and nephews until they were a few days old." He looked at her. "She's so tiny and so perfect." He looked at her hands. "She's even got teeny tiny fingernails."

I smiled.

"Just think, Tank, someday you might have one of these", I said.

Tank looked up in a panic. "I don't think I could ever have kids", he said. "I'm almost forty."

"I'm thirty-five", said Amelia. "Does that make me too old to have kids as well?"

"I just never thought about the possibility of having kids."

Amelia smiled. "Until now, neither did I."

I laughed. "You'd better double up on protection then, because as Ranger and I found out, birth control is not infallible and even if you don't think you want kids, sometimes life has a way of surprising you."

"But it was the best surprise ever", said Ranger. "I've been through that surprise twice now, and in both cases it has resulted in the most wonderful people."

"I'm going to take her from you", said Tracy, "and pass her on to the next person. She is coming up to a feeding time soon, and I know that no one will be happy if she starts to fuss while they are holding her."

Tank chuckled and stood up. Tracy turned to Morelli where he was sitting on the side of the other bed, and handed him Tia. Morelli looked at her, entranced as she opened her mouth in a yawn.

Tank came up to us and hugged and kissed me, and shook Ranger's hand. "We'll keep you informed of how things are going tomorrow."

"I think that your day will be less disturbing than ours", I said with a smile. "My grandmother is coming tomorrow. Apparently she has been telling everyone that the reason she hasn't seen the baby yet is because Tia was born with two heads and had to go for emergency surgery to get one of them removed."

Tank shook his head. "Oh boy", he said. He looked at Morelli. "I'll talk to you tomorrow." He turned back to Ranger and me. "Do you want me to fake an emergency to get you out of the family times?" He laughed when I nodded enthusiastically. "Take it easy." He clasped Amelia's hand and led her from the room. She walked him to the elevators, and came back a few minutes later. Her lips were reddened, however, and I smirked at her.

Morelli looked up from his inspection of the baby. "Who's next?" he said. "I don't want to hog her."

Gabriel sat down to take his turn and Tracy moved Tia over. "I'll be back tomorrow", said Morelli as he stood in preparation to leave. "I'll try to pop in when Edna is here to help you head off her insensitive comments."

"Are you sure you want to?" I said. "After all, she has been telling everyone that you and Ranger are a gay couple, and I was just the surrogate woman carrying your baby."

Tracy snorted. I looked at her and smiled. "I'm sorry, that was inappropriate of me. It's just that anyone with half a brain could tell that the two of you aren't gay."

"I'm glad to hear you say that", said Morelli with a smile. "After Steph broke up with me, apparently Steph's grandmother put out that I was disappointing in the sack and that's why she left."

"Good grief", I said. "I'm sorry, Joe."

"You two used to go out with each other?" said Tracy with an amazed look.

"We went out for four years", said Morelli, "and we were best friends which is why we were together so long. However, we decided that we had a better friendship than a relationship, and shortly after we broke up a year ago Steph started going out with Ranger. Now I can say that Steph is still my best friend and Ranger has become another close friend. It has worked out well." I was glad to hear him describe it like that. At the time, I had been the one breaking it off with him and he had been very unhappy about it.

"And we have always been grateful that you handled it the way you did", I said with a smile.

Morelli grinned. "I admit, it was hard at first. But then I realized that our friendship didn't have to flounder just because we weren't going out together any longer. Our friendship still has all the elements that I truly valued in our relationship, and now I've decided that I'm especially lucky – and because you have worked hard to keep the friendship alive, I am now a very proud uncle."

"That's amazing", said Tracy.

Morelli smiled and leaned down and gave me a hug and kissed me on my cheek. "Take care of yourself, cupcake", he said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Love you, Joe."

"Love you too, cupcake." He shook Ranger's hand and left the room.

Only Gabriel, Livy, Amelia and Tracy were left in the room. "Do you have a couple of minutes for a check in?" said Gabriel as he smiled at Tia and handed the baby over to Livy. She held the baby securely, but Tia woke up and started to fuss. "My guess is that she's hungry", said Tracy. "I'll change her and be back in a moment."

"I'll wait outside so that you can have some undisturbed time with Gabriel and Livy", said Amelia.

"Thanks, Mellie", said Gabriel.

She smiled and nodded, and she quietly left the room. Tracy left as well as she carried Tia to the nursery to change her diaper.

"How are you feeling?" said Gabriel.


	13. Chapter 13

"I'm better than the last time we talked", said Ranger. "Steph and I had a nap together for an hour, and I slept with Tia on my chest. It was reassuring to me, and hearing Tia snuffle and snore, and being able to smell Steph's shampoo, helped ground me in a way that I needed. I felt like the coil of anxiety in me was starting to smooth out."

"Have you left Tia and Steph at all since Tia was found?" said Gabriel.

"I had to escort Steph's grandmother down to the entrance to the hospital."

"How did you feel leaving them behind?"

"Panicky", said Ranger. "My anxiety levels were so high I thought that I would have a panic attack. The only thing that was keeping me somewhat sane was the knowledge that Mellie was here with them."

"I imagine that it will be some time before you relax again", said Gabriel. "I think that would be natural. Just give yourself time to recover."

"I'll be better when I am back to the Rangeman building as well", said Ranger. "Our building is as protected as Fort Knox, and I could use that level of security."

Tracy came in with Tia, and Tia was getting frantic with her need to eat. I undid the ties at my shoulder and dropped the front of the gown, and Tracy handed the baby to me. "Let's see if she remembers how to nurse", she said.

I brushed my nipple against Tia's cheek, and she turned her head to take the nipple into her mouth. She just cried though, and didn't take the breast. "Try expressing some milk into her mouth", said Tracy.

"Can you hold her?" I said to Ranger. I was starting to get panicky. I needed Tia to be okay at feeding. It was necessary to ensure that we'd be able to go home and, like Ranger, I didn't feel comfortable being in the hospital any longer. Even knowing that Amelia and Ranger were splitting bodyguarding duties didn't reassure me.

He held the baby, and I tried to get the baby interested in sucking again. But she was getting more and more frantic, and less and less able to take sustenance. I sobbed once, and Ranger kissed me on my shoulder. "Breathe, babe. You can do this. Tia can do this. She's just learning, and you have to give her a bit of time to learn."

I expressed some milk into Tia's mouth, and she stopped crying and swallowed the food. I tried putting my breast in her mouth again, and she still didn't take the breast.

"Put your breast in her mouth and try expressing some again", said Tracy.

I tried that, tears running down my face, and Tia finally took me into her mouth and started to suck. Ranger kissed me on my shoulder again. "I knew you could do it", he said. I could hear the pride in his voice.

I took over holding Tia. Tracy looked at us. "I'll give you some privacy, but I'll be in the nursery if you need me."

"Thanks, Tracy", I said.

She smiled and left the room, and Gabriel turned back to us. "So you'll be happy when Steph and the baby are back at Rangeman. They won't be able to stay at Rangeman permanently. How are you going to feel when they have to leave the building to go to appointments or other engagements?"

"At first, I will want to accompany Steph everywhere", said Ranger. "After a while, after seeing that she is safe, I'll ask Amelia to accompany them. It will be hard at first for me to learn how to trust that they'll be okay. I'm not going to recover from this easily."

"How do you think you'll be?" said Gabriel to me.

I sighed. "I started to have a panic attack today just thinking that Tia was going to be looked after in the nursery across the hall. I don't think I'll do well."

"What do you think about going back to Rangeman?"

"I can't wait although, as much as I want to go back, I also want to ensure that Tia is better able to drink. I don't want to take the chance that we get home and she is unable to feed properly."

"I think that's a worry of all new moms", said Livy with a smile. "Earlier, we were talking about your belief that you deserved to have the baby taken away from you, that Tia was kidnapped because you were happy. Do you still think that?"

I looked down at Tia. "A bit", I said. I sniffled. "She's just so perfect. She's so little and so vulnerable, and I'm a failure as a mother. I couldn't even protect my baby."

"Do you think that I'm a failure as a father?" said Ranger. "After all, I failed to keep her safe as well."

"No. You did everything in your power to keep us safe. You should have been able to trust the hospital nursery to keep her out of danger." I sniffled some more.

"If Ranger isn't at fault", said Gabriel, "why do you think that you were at fault? After all, you both trusted the hospital staff to look after your baby. There shouldn't have been a problem. Trusting the hospital staff wasn't the problem. The problem lies with a very sick woman who thinks that her baby is alive and that she was taking care of him. That could have happened to anyone. The difference is that you belong to Rangeman, and Rangeman staff always take care of their own. Together, you found her before she died. It was close, but you found her in time. And now she is bouncing back from her ordeal and is doing well."

I sniffled again. "I'm not doing as well as Tia."

Ranger kissed me on my shoulder again. "Neither am I."

"Is the hospital working with you and trying to help you get past this trauma?" said Gabriel.

I smiled sadly. "The head of the hospital came in to talk to me after Tia was first taken. He wrung his hands and said that he was very sorry, that it had never happened before, and if there was anything he could do to let him know. So I told him that we were turning the room into command central, that we needed phones and internet and television, and we'd have a lot of people coming into and out of this room over the course of the day. He – and more importantly, however, the PR lady – were very happy to help."

"When we got back with Tia tonight", said Ranger, "we told the hospital that we wanted Tracy designated as our private nurse and we wanted to have Tia in the room with us. When they refused, we asked them to take it to the hospital administration. The doctor finally gave approval for Tia to be with us. I would have, if necessary, hired Tracy to come home with us and would have taken Tia home if they had insisted on keeping Tia in the nursery."

"Are you keeping Mellie here tonight?" said Livy.

"Mellie is sharing bodyguarding duties with me until we leave", said Ranger. "I want Steph to have a good sleep. She hasn't slept well in weeks, and after going through labor I'm sure she's tired. Mellie and I will watch over the baby in four-hour shifts. Mellie said that she will take the first four hours, I can take the second four hours, and she'll take the third. The families are on standby and know not to come until we call them. We anticipate that we won't have them visit until the afternoon."

"And hopefully my grandmother will stay away this time", I said with a sad smile. "She showed up earlier today, and Ranger had to escort her off the property."

"How do you think your grandmother will react?" said Livy.

"We'll pay for it", I said, "but to tell you the truth, we'd pay for it anyway. My grandmother will always come up with stories and make my life challenging. Just not seeing her for the last few weeks is enough of a reason for her to come up with stories. I find, to keep control of the stories, you have to visit her frequently so that her mind is taken up with actual events rather than letting her mind come up with tall tales in lieu of them."

"What do you think the current story is?" said Livy.

"I don't know, but I don't think that you could top a woman walking off the psych ward and stealing our baby", I said.

Ranger smiled and kissed my shoulder again. "I suspect, somehow, that your grandmother will spread the story that the person on the psych ward was actually an alien, and she was stealing Tia to take her back to her home to study and raise as her own."

"Yeah, I can see that", I said. "She would even think that story is believable."

Livy smiled.

"Why is she so imaginative?" said Gabriel. "I mean, there has to be some reason that she invents tall tales like that."

"I think she is one of those people that likes to be the center of attention. When my grandfather was alive, she was the center of attention. I think they got along alright. My grandfather seemed to laugh a lot at her antics, but she wasn't so out of control then. Of course, my grandfather treated her as important and she felt valued. Now that my grandfather has died and my grandmother is living with my parents, she is adrift. She has no one dedicated to her any longer. She hasn't done well with the shift. She is imaginative, but she is trying to find someone who is willing to treat her as though she was essential to them. Since she cannot find a man who is interested in treating her as though she was the center of his universe, she tries to get attention in other ways. The method she has chosen is to become the gossip queen and, if she doesn't have any good gossip, she'll make some up just so that she can continue to get attention."

"How will she be when she has to share that attention with Tia?" said Livy. "After all, with Tia's adventures, your grandmother won't be the focus of attention."

"She'll demand to hold her and will try to show that Tia prefers her over other people. She will try to take over and become the most important person to her."

"How does that make you feel?" said Gabriel.

I thought about that for a moment. "A few things. I feel resentful that my grandmother will feel competitive with my baby over attention. I feel angry that my grandmother will try to steal the limelight, but most of all, I feel sad. I feel sad that my grandmother is so unhappy that she needs that constant confirmation that she is a valuable woman. I feel sad that my grandmother doesn't have more self-confidence and most of all I feel sad that she doesn't see that she is a worthwhile person just by being the person she is, and that she doesn't understand that these stories don't make her more interesting, that these stories don't add but rather detract from her appeal."

"What do you think?" said Gabriel to Ranger.

"I think that compassion and ability to understand people is one of the things that I love most about Steph."

Gabriel smiled. "What do you think about Steph's grandmother?"

"I think she is a lonely old woman who has too much time on her hands. I think she is intelligent and imaginative and absolutely bored to tears. She has far more life in her than is normal in a woman her age, and I think she will live forever just because she won't give up. I feel sorry for her. She always reminds me of a young woman trapped in an old woman's body, and her inability to do the things that a young woman can do is frustrating to her."

"She's young in mind but not in body?" said Gabriel.

I smiled. "Grandma is a seventeen-year old mind in a seventy-year old body, and I would say that mentally she is getting younger rather than older."

"How do you deal with it?" Livy asked Ranger.

"Steph and I are starting to practice tough love with her. For example, we told the families that we didn't want any visitors today. Edna came anyway, so I escorted her off the premises and she didn't get the chance to see the baby or Steph. Tomorrow, if she comes before she is invited, she will again be escorted off the premises and this time we will not allow her to come even when we invite people. I have already told her that, and I have told Steph's mom that as well."

"Will you be able to pull it off?" said Livy.

"I hope we don't have to find out", said Ranger.

"You don't want your family here tomorrow morning?" said Gabriel.

"I want Steph to sleep, and I want to get some sleep as well", said Ranger. "I need this to feel comfortable within myself. It's been a long and upsetting few months, and I really feel like I need a break."

"I don't blame you", said Gabriel. "The two of you have had a lot to handle."

"How is your mood when you think about your grandmother?" said Livy to me.

I sighed as Tia popped off my breast, asleep, and I handed her to Ranger to burp while I covered myself up again. "Honestly? It feels so hopeless. I understand why my grandmother makes up stories, but I feel hopeless to change things. I feel beaten down. Normally I could just write it off as my grandmother having fun, but I've been finding it harder and harder lately. The last four months especially have been hard on me. Before four months ago I took things in stride and didn't let my grandmother's stories get to me. However, about when I got shot things started to change for me."

"That happened right before Christmas, didn't it?" said Livy.

"Yes."

"So that was when your sister started acting oddly and trying to compete with you, trying to make it seem like you aren't a good person or a good candidate for being a mother?"

"Yes."

"So that's when your depression started?" said Gabriel. "You got shot, your grandmother created stories, and your sister told you that you weren't fit to be a mother?"

"And that I wasn't fit to be a wife."

"How do you feel about being shot now?"

I paused and looked down at the sheets. "I think I shouldn't have been wearing my bulletproof jacket."

"You would have preferred that you would have died?" said Gabriel softly.

"I think it would have been better for Ranger."

"How can you say that, babe? You're my life. Without you, I literally would not want to go on. I don't know how I'd ever cope if something happened to you." He placed Tia in my lap and swallowed back a sob. "Eres mi todo. You're my everything", he said quietly.

"But I'm not a good wife."

"You are everything I need and more. You make me happy. Bone-deep happy. I have never been as happy as I have been since you decided to give me a chance. You are an excellent wife."

"I'm not a good mother."

"You're an excellent mother. You are dedicated to our baby. I could see that during your pregnancy. You did everything you could to give our baby the best start to life. It wasn't easy, but you did it. Tia is lucky to have you for a mother."

I sniffled.

"What are you thinking, Stephanie, when you hear Ranger say that you're a good mother?" said Gabriel.

"I'm thinking that he's wrong, that someone like Val would be a better mother, and that I'm just a reject who doesn't deserve good things in life."

"I actually agree with Ranger", said Gabriel. "I think that you're a good mother, that you have done the impossible to keep your baby as healthy as you have, and that your sister may be a good mother to her kids but her kids are different than your kids – and you'll be a great mother to Tia. However, those feelings of inferiority and worthlessness and guilt are what you have to work on in upcoming sessions with Livy. If the upsetting feelings don't disappear in another couple of weeks, we'll prescribe medication."

"What kind of medication makes me into a better person? And wouldn't that medication affect the baby? I need to be able to breastfeed. It's the last gift that I can give Tia."

"First of all, you are a good person. The medication doesn't change you into a better person. It helps correct biochemical imbalances in your brain so that you can recognize your worth. Your feelings are indicative of an illness much like diabetes. In both diabetes and depression there are physical causes, imbalances in biochemicals that cause symptoms. With diabetes, the symptoms are too high blood sugars. With depression, it is feeling worthless and guilty and hopeless. You don't deserve to have to feel this way." I shuddered in another breath. He stood. "It's late, and I think that you both deserve a good sleep. We're in the office tomorrow, but if you want to talk to us just call and leave a message, and we'll call you back. When you do get back to the office, let us know and we'll work you into the schedule. I think, for the first couple of weeks, that you should arrange to see us every day. I don't know about Livy, but if I don't have time I will see you after normal office hours, Ranger. I think you could use the support."

"I can see Steph after hours as well", said Livy. "I agree with Gabriel in that more frequent therapy will help you over the hump as you become more comfortable with what is going on and the changes that have happened in your life." She paused. "I also agree with Gabriel. You don't deserve to feel this way, Steph. You are a good person. I know we had talked about medication as being a good thing for you, and you had vetoed it because of your pregnancy. However, you aren't pregnant any longer and Gabriel won't prescribe something that isn't safe to use during breastfeeding. Think about it, okay?"

I nodded. I knew that I would think of little else.

"Tia really is a perfect little bundle", said Gabriel. "You two did good. I hope you have a good sleep, and if I don't talk to you tomorrow, I'll see you in another day or two. I'll get Mellie to retrieve Tracy."


	14. Chapter 14

"I didn't know that Livy suggested medication", said Ranger quietly after Gabriel and Livy left the room.

I shuddered in another breath. "I was so focused on delivering a healthy baby and doing what I could to give Tia the best start to life that I didn't want to take the chance that the baby was affected. I mean, I don't think that the effects of antidepressants have been tested for a long enough period to say that they unequivocally don't cause problems with the baby. Those problems may not show up until after the baby is in school. They may not show up until the baby is an adult. But I'm not convinced that the problems won't show up. And it wasn't like I was unable to care for myself. I still showered each day. I still ate and slept. I wasn't suicidal. I was coping and still caring for Tia well."

"What do you think about taking medication?"

"I'm from the Burg. We don't take medication for just feeling bad. This is a problem that I should be able to overcome on my own."

"But this isn't just you feeling bad. This is much more."

"I know. It's a crushing despair unlike anything I have ever felt before. But I still should be able to get over this myself."

"Before you were shot in December, did you regularly feel a crushing despair?"

"No."

"Babe, there is a bad mood and there is depression. They are two different kettles of fish. It's okay to be depressed, but you have to realize that it is a medical condition. And medical conditions need medication to help you overcome them. If you remain depressed, you won't enjoy Tia as much as you deserve to enjoy her. It could affect your bond with her, which would be bad for Tia. If, in another couple of weeks you still feel as depressed as you are, I think you should go on medication. You deserve to feel good."

I swiped away my tears. "It just seemed that the only reason that I was allowed to live after I was shot was so that I could deliver Tia. Now my job is done."

"No, it isn't. You still need to feed Tia, to care for Tia. To love Tia. And you still need to care for me and love me. I need you, babe. Eres tan importante para mi como el aire que respiro. You are as important to me as the air I breathe. I need you in my life and without you I could not cope, I would not want to cope. Please stay with me. Te amo mucho. I love you so much."

"Yo también te amo. I love you too."

Tracy came into the room and took Tia from Ranger's arms. She put her in the bassinet as I shuddered in a breath, and Ranger turned on his side and gathered me in his arms. I buried my head in his chest and, as Amelia came in, saw that I was crying and said that she would sit in the hall, Ranger smoothed his hand up and down my spine. He murmured words in Spanish that, although I didn't understand them I could hear the love underlying them. As I dealt with my anguish for needing to be there for Tia, I cried like my heart was breaking and Ranger held me, told me that he loved me, and let me cry myself to sleep.

I woke two hours later to the sound of Tia crying. Ranger vaulted out of the bed and retrieved her, and took her across the room to the nursery to be changed into a clean diaper. By the time he had returned, I had undone my hospital gown so that my chest was exposed, and was sitting up.

"Babe", said Ranger, "let's try another position. Rachel used to do this with Julie. I don't know if Tia knows enough yet to know how to do this, but I'd like to give this a try."

"What's that?"

"Lie on your side on the bed, and have Tia feed from you from a lying position. That way, you can sleep while she is feeding, and I can take her off the breast when she is done."

I yawned. "Anything that gets me more sleep is good."

Ranger smiled. I always had loved my sleep.

I wiggled me way down the bed and lay on my side, and Ranger lay little Tia on her side facing me. I put my breast in Tia's mouth and expressed some milk, and Tia latched on. Ranger smiled. "She's learning fast", he said. "I told you that she was the smartest baby ever. With you for a mother, how could she be anything but?"

Tears came to my eyes again. Ranger was the only person who had ever thought that I was smart.

Ranger got into bed beside me. He cradled my cheek in his hand and swiped the tears away with his thumb. "Oh, babe", he said quietly. "We'll get through this together, okay?" I nodded. He got out of bed as Tia popped off of my breast, put Tia up on his shoulder, and expertly burped her. He placed her back in the bassinet and stroked her back until she fell asleep, then came over to me. He climbed back into bed and cuddled in to me and, as he rubbed my back like he had Tia's, he soothed me back to sleep.

That first feeding seemed to set a pattern that Ranger followed for the rest of the night. Even while he was guarding Tia and me, he still lay beside me and cuddled me, and I took comfort in his presence.

The next morning, I woke to Amelia whispering to Ranger. "You should have woken me", she said. "I didn't need an eight-hour sleep."

"I was hoping that you'd be able to care for Tia while I had a nap with Steph later", said Ranger. "And I wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway, so one of us should have been able to get some rest."

"Are you okay?" said Amelia.

Ranger blew out a breath. "Not really. I had a lot on my mind, and I needed to hold Steph and know that she was there, safe with me, while I worked things out in my head."

I smiled at him as I opened my eyes. "Did you work things out?" I said.

Ranger's face lightened as he looked at me. "I did. I played on the computer a bit and I lay down and held you for a bit, and I listened to you snore for a bit, and it was all good."

I mock gasped. "I do not snore."

"No?" he said with a smile. "Then who was it?"

"Tia", I said with a laugh.

Ranger grinned. "Then she snores like a lumberjack."

I chuckled.

"Don't worry, Steph", said Amelia. "You don't snore. I would have heard you. I'm a fairly light sleeper and, if you snored, I would have stayed awake."

Tia woke up and started to fuss, and Ranger picked her up and carried her across to the nursery so that he could change her. I used the time away from her to use the facilities, and to brush my teeth. I felt so much more human after I had done so.

He came back in a few minutes later with Tracy in tow. "Did you sleep at all?" I asked Tracy.

"I did. I grabbed a staff cot and slept eight hours", said Tracy with a smile. She came over to take my vitals as I undid my hospital gown and settled Tia at my breast. With some encouragement, she started to suck. Tracy smiled. "She is learning so fast", she said. "Ranger said that she was going two hours between feedings last night and that each feeding was taking only fifteen minutes. That is awesome! We'll have to weigh her today. Just realize that most babies lose about ten percent of their weight just after they are born and I especially think that Tia will have just because she was without food so long yesterday. That doesn't show that there is anything wrong. It's natural to lose weight as the babies learn to feed properly. She'll start gaining weight soon enough."

"I think she will", said Ranger. "Although Steph isn't overweight in any way, she enjoys food and has a high metabolism. I hope that Tia takes after her mother."

"Why is that?" asked Amelia.

"The more food you eat, the more nutrients you take in", said Ranger. "As I said, Steph isn't taking in too much food for her body to process. She's in no way fat, but I love seeing Steph eat the food I make. It makes me feel good about my abilities as a chef to see her enjoy it so much."

"You are a good chef", I said. I sniffled. "You are a much better chef than I will ever be."

"First of all", said Ranger, "you have the makings of a good chef. You love and appreciate food, and you are learning how to cook. You have mastered eggs and salads, and you can prepare a few different appetizers. You could get by on what you can cook. However, Amelia and I will teach you more, slowly. Don't worry. You'll learn. Second of all, it doesn't really matter if you are a good cook or not. Our kids won't starve with you as a mother. They might be eating more frozen foods than most families, but that's okay. We have together learned about the food pyramid, and you'll make sure that Tia is eating foods from the food pyramid in the proper proportions. Eating healthy foods in the proper proportions is what's most important and, no matter what, you'll make sure that Tia eats properly."

"All I can say is that I'm glad that Amelia is capable of cooking. When you have to go away on business I will be able to use all the help that I can get."

Ranger smiled. "You'd get by."

Amelia smiled. "I don't think you've ever had a supportive learning environment. I mean, I was at your parents when Val was talking about your ability to cook, and she belittled your attempts."

"Val has always been a good cook."

"I'm sure she made mistakes when she was learning as well", said Ranger. "Everybody makes mistakes when they are learning, and Val is no exception. Did your mother ever talk to you about the mistakes that Val made?"

"No."

"Did she ever talk about the mistakes you made?"

"No."

"See? Your mother realizes that it's part of learning. It's just that Val is using your learning process as another method of making you feel bad. That speaks worse of Val than it does of you", said Ranger. "Just because Val wants to make you feel bad doesn't mean that you deserve to." Ranger sat down beside me and put his arm around me. "Babe, this is what's important. Our family. And Tia and I think you are the most amazing and wonderful person in the world. We are the only people that matter, and it doesn't matter what anyone else says, we are grateful that you are in our lives."

I leaned against him and he kissed me on my head. "I love you too", I said.

Ranger smiled and kissed me again. "Did you want to go back to sleep?" he said.

"No. I'm awake now. I was thinking that I'd like to have a shower."

"You can do that", said Tracy. "Your vitals look good. Your blood pressure is just slightly better, and is 135/75. It is heading in the right direction." Tia popped off my breast and Ranger took her to burp her. Minutes later, she stopped fussing. "I'd like to take Tia's vitals and do a check for her", said Tracy. "I'll go across to the nursery so that I can weigh her as well."

"I'll go with you", said Amelia, "and I'll get Steph a clean gown to wear."

The two women left the room and Ranger gave me a light kiss. "I love you, okay? And it doesn't matter how you feel or how you think of yourself, I love you to the bottom of my soul. Eres mi alma gemela y nada de lo que hagas cambiará eso. You are my soul mate, and nothing you do will ever change that. Te amo y estoy malditamente agradecido de que me ames a cambio. I love you and I am so damn grateful that you love me in return. The best thing that ever happened to me in my life was when I met you."

"Yo te amo más. I love you more."

Ranger smiled and kissed me again. "Imposible."

"I know what that means", I said as I smiled.

Ranger laughed.

Tracy walked back into the hospital room, and Amelia followed her with a clean gown and a stack of towels. "Tia's vitals are good and she is starting to gain weight after her low weight last night", said Tracy. "She also is heading in the right direction and is growing the way that she should. Let's do some kangaroo care with Tia. Steph, since you wanted a shower, how about Ranger has the first chance to cuddle with Tia and then, when you are out of the shower and are ready for the day, you can cuddle with Tia and Ranger can have his shower. While you cuddle, I'll try to drum up some breakfast for Steph. Unfortunately, I won't be able to drum up some breakfast for you two", she said to Amelia and Ranger. "However, just judging by the quality of food that is provided, you might be better off buying Steph and the two of you some breakfast from the cafeteria anyway. The patients' lunches and dinners aren't too bad, but their breakfasts are typically powdered eggs and ham and is the meal that new mothers most often refuse to eat – and I don't blame them."

I smiled.

"I can get something from the cafeteria for everyone", said Amelia, "while Ranger does his kangaroo care and Steph has a shower."

"Thanks, Amelia", I said. I took the gown from her and picked up a pair of clean underwear and my toiletry bag from Ranger's and my carryall.

"What do you want?" said Amelia.

I sighed as a wave of hopelessness washed over me. I didn't know what I wanted. "I don't care", I said. I went into the bathroom and started the shower, undressed, and took a few minutes to wash off and relax under the warm water. I didn't take as long as I wanted and I didn't feel refreshed when I finished. However, I did feel cleaner. I hadn't had a shower since before I'd had Tia, and getting off all the sweat from when I was in labor was a good thing.

I dried off and got dressed, combed out my hair and put it back in a ponytail. With putting it into a ponytail it wouldn't frizz the same as it would if I let it all hang loose. While Ranger had seen my hair all frizzy and Amelia would soon as well, I didn't particularly want Ranger's family seeing me look so unkempt and I wouldn't want to hear Val's comments if I didn't look put together.

I drew the line, however, on wearing makeup. While I wanted to put on some armor, I thought it was a little silly. People, I thought, should understand why I wasn't wearing makeup and, if they didn't, they could go screw themselves.

Besides, I hadn't brought any with me.

I walked out of the bathroom and Ranger smiled at me. "You just get prettier every time I see you", he said. I made a face and he laughed. "I was wondering whether Amelia would mind taking a picture of the three of us. It will be our first family shot, and I'd like to send it to Silvio and Wes and Lizzie." Silvio was Ranger's brother. He was in the army and was stationed in the Middle East. Wes and Lizzie were good friends of Ranger's. They had been the previous owners of Pearl Security, the security company that Ranger had recently bought out. I had met them in February and thought they were lovely people. Because Lizzie was terminally ill and was only given a few more months to live as of last February, they would not be able to get up to Trenton to see the baby and Tia and I would not be cleared for travel to see them in person. The last that we had heard, Lizzie was in the hospital and wasn't expected to get out again.

Lizzie and Wes were true family people, however, and they were extremely excited about Ranger and I expecting. I knew that they would be thrilled to get a copy of the picture and would be a good support to us when they heard everything that had happened with Tia in her short life so far.

I smiled. "I think that's a good idea", I said. "I think we should get one of us as a family, and a close-up one of Tia as well. They are going to think that she's the cutest baby ever."

Ranger grinned. "How could she be anything but, with you as a mother?"

I made another face. "And here I was thinking that she looked like you."

"I don't know", said Ranger. "She has your nose and the shape of your eyes. I think she has my mouth though, and my ears."

I smiled. "No wonder she has such a cute little mouth then", I said.


	15. Chapter 15

Amelia bought me a BLT, and an egg and cheese sandwich on a bagel for Ranger. She bought herself the same thing as me. I tucked into the food, but although I was eating the food I was forcing it in. In the last month, I had found that I wasn't interested in food the same as I had been in the past. The tastes and textures weren't as appealing to me, and I didn't get the same pleasure from it that I had always gotten before. I ate though, since I needed to feed Tia and I wouldn't be able to if I didn't eat myself.

Morelli came into the room and gave me a hug. "How are you doing, cupcake?" he said.

"I'm good", I said with a smile. "How are you?"

He searched my face. Although I knew that he could see the lie on it, he played along the way I wanted him to. "I'm good", he said. "I'm on the way up to talk to the hospital administration about what happened yesterday, but I thought I'd stop off here first. How's Tia?"

"Gaining weight", I said. "She was her lowest last night after her ordeal yesterday, but has since started to gain weight again. She is certainly feeding well and has quickly learned how to feed. It still takes a minute to get her to latch on, but it is better than it was last night by far. She's developing a good ability to suck and swallow. Now she just has to develop the ability to regulate her own body temperature and then she'll be allowed to go home."

"She's going to be the smartest baby ever", said Morelli. "I mean, how could she not? She has you for a mother."

"Poor kid", I said.

I guess Morelli knew that I was serious. He frowned as he looked at me. "Cupcake, you are the most loving and compassionate person I know. You make a great mom. Just look at how healthy Tia is. That is solely because you have been as dedicated to her and to making her the healthiest baby that she can be. Tia is a very lucky baby to have you as a mother."

I sighed. I appreciated that everyone was trying to build me up, but they didn't understand. The only benefit that I could offer society was to feed my baby. I believed very strongly that breast milk was the way to go, and that meant that I was still needed.

Tia started to cry, and Ranger popped up to take her to the nursery to change her. As he left, Morelli said quietly, "how are you really doing, cupcake?"

"I have a bit of the baby blues", I said, "but I'm sure they will pass as Tia and I settle into a new pattern. I have never been good with change."

Morelli snorted. "You have the ability to roll with the punches better than most people I know. You are good with change. However, if it is the baby blues it will go away quickly, won't it?"

"I guess so."

"Then you just have to tough it out."

"I know. I'm trying to." I sighed. "Have you heard anything from Tank this morning?"

"I heard from him just a few minutes before I got up to your room. They haven't found Yvette yet. Miguel and Dirk are looking for other properties that she might be at."

"Hopefully they will come up with something soon."

"I hope so as well." He looked at me. "Are you tired?"

"Always", I replied with a smile. "Aren't all new parents supposed to be tired?"

Morelli smiled.

Ranger walked in with Tia, and he waited until I had undone the gown and prepared myself to feed Tia. When I was ready, he passed the squalling baby over. Morelli stood. "I should get up to the administration office", he said. "Depending upon what the hospital staff says, I might be and will most likely be charging the hospital with negligence."

"Good", said Ranger. "I'll walk you out."

They left and Amelia looked at me. "You have a very good relationship with him, don't you?"

"With Joe?" I said, surprised. "Yes. After Ranger, he's my best friend and, after Ranger, he knows me better than anyone else."

"It's good to have people like that in your life", said Amelia.

Tracy walked into the room. "Was that Detective Morelli in here?" she said. She smiled softly. "He's a hunk. Is he has nice as he looks?"

I smiled. "Yes, it was Joe, and yes, he's as nice as he looks. There was a reason we went out together for as long as we did. He truly is a great man. He just, no matter how good a friend that he is, isn't the right person for me."

"What is he like? Is he single?"

"Yes, he is. He's a family man and loves people. He cares deeply about others and believes in justice and protecting the vulnerable. He has a good sense of humor, is kind and compassionate, and is as protective as hell. As I said, he's a good man."

"Why did you break up?"

I paused. "When I was telling you yesterday about the trials I had gone through during my pregnancy? That wasn't something that happened to me just when I was pregnant. For some reason, I have more than my share of mishaps and I work in a segment of society that doesn't often have nice people in it. The upshot was that I was often in danger…and Joe couldn't handle it. When he asked me to quit my job and get a less dangerous one, I refused. After all, I wasn't asking him to quit his job, even though he dealt with the same segment of society. When I insisted on continuing in my career choice, Joe demanded me to quit and out of concern for me he started bossing me around and highhandedly telling me what to do. That got me upset, and I would dig my heels in and refuse. It meant that Joe was often losing his temper with me and I was often getting angry at him. When I stopped going out with him, I felt like a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I mean, I understand why he was as bossy as he was, but that didn't mean that I had to like it."

"Ranger doesn't tell you what to do?"

"Not the same. If he is nervous about me going out, instead of telling me I can't go he requests that I take a bodyguard along with me. The difference is that Morelli, out of desperation, tells me what I am going to do. Ranger requests my cooperation. I know that Morelli wouldn't have been so highhanded if it wasn't that he felt that I was in danger. However, I was and he couldn't cope with it. He cared about me too much."

"Do you think he still cares about you?"

"Yes, but I think he cares about me as a friend rather than someone he wants to date. When we broke up, I told him that I didn't think we were a good mix as a couple but that I still wanted him as a good friend. We had a few difficult months as we sorted everything out, but through it all we've been able to retain the friendship and, as Joe said, the friendship is what he valued in our relationship. The only difference in our relationship from before to now is that we are no longer sexual partners. He's a good man though, and I have an incredible amount of respect for him."

Tracy paused. "Do you think that he would be interested in me?"

I smiled. "If you want, I can ask him."

She blushed. "I feel a little like a schoolgirl, getting someone to ask the quarterback if he would be interested in me."

I chuckled. "You couldn't do better as a partner. He really is a good person."

Ranger came back in the room, and his face lightened as he looked at me and smiled. He came over to me and sat beside me. "Did you want to have a nap again after Tia finishes feeding?" he said.

"No", I said. "I'd rather sleep this afternoon when it is more evenly spaced between the morning and the evening."

"That works for me. Do you want me to call the families and tell them that they can come to visit?"

"That sounds good. It would be good to get the visits over with." Ranger laughed, but I was serious. Having the families to visit seemed like far too much confusion, and I could only hope that Tia slept through it.

Ranger called the families and told them that it was a good time for them to come for a few minutes. "You won't be able to stay long", he said. "Tia feeds about every two hours, and she is just finishing feeding now."

I could hear my grandmother shout out that she'd been good.

"Yes, you have, Edna. That's why you'll be allowed to see your great-granddaughter. If you had come again before you were invited I would have turned you away and refused to let you see the baby until the family reunion."

"But that's in another six weeks", said my grandmother.

"I know", said Ranger.

I could just imagine my grandmother pouting at Ranger's words.

"Either way", said my mother, "you stayed away until you were invited. That's what's important. You'll be able to come with us. I don't know if Val will be able to come with Albert and the kids. It is Val's day off work though, so she might be able to make it."

"If she wants to come", said Ranger diplomatically, "I'm sure her niece would enjoy meeting her."

"We'll be there in about half an hour", said my mother, and she quickly hung up so that she could get ready.

Ranger called his parents, and they said they would be at the hospital in about fifteen minutes. "We stayed over in the hotel so that we'd be close by", said Ranger's father. "We just need to check out, and we'll be there soon."

Ranger hung up the phone as Tia popped off my breast, and Ranger lifted her and burped her as I did up my gown again. After burping her, he put her in her bassinet and turned to me. "Can I get you anything?"

"No", I said. "I'm good."

Tracy came into the hospital room carrying a pitcher of ice water and a tumbler. "You aren't drinking enough", she said. "If you become dehydrated, you won't be able to produce milk." She handed me the water and I took a sip and then, because it tasted so good, I drank down the entire tumbler-full. Tracy smiled and poured me another glass of water, and left to refill the pitcher.

Ranger sat on the bed beside me and snugged me in under his arm. He kissed me on the top of my head as I snuggled in, and I shut my eyes as a wave of fatigue and hopelessness washed over me. "Breathe, babe", said Ranger softly. "By focusing on your breath, you'll be able to rise above how you are feeling. Yes, you will be feeling just as crappy, but by focusing on your breathing you won't be hanging onto the pain and it won't make as much of an impact. It's like when you were in labor. The more you rode the pain, the less devastating it was."

I nodded. I knew what he was saying in theory. It was just harder to do in practice.


	16. Chapter 16

I was just falling asleep when Ranger's parents and grandmother walked in. I opened my eyes and smiled, and was hugged and kissed by all three of them. They each stopped by Tia's bassinet. "She's so tiny", said Ranger's mother with a smile. "She's like a perfect little doll."

"You said she weighs only four pounds, three ounces?" said Ranger's father.

"She actually weighed less last night since she hadn't had a chance to eat all day yesterday", I said. "However, as of this morning she had gained weight and was only down ten percent of her birth body weight, and that's apparently typical for newborns. She seems to like to eat every two hours. I think she is making up for lost time with not being able to eat yesterday."

"That's tiring for you", said Grandma Rosa.

"I know", I said, "but it is good in many ways. If she is feeding frequently here at the hospital, she is learning how to feed properly while I still have support from the nurse. Tracy is the nurse who has been assigned to us, and she's been fabulous. She's a big part of why Tia is feeding as well as she is."

"We hope to go home soon", said Ranger. "The hospital has been good and has assigned Tracy to be our private nurse to help ease our concerns after Tia was kidnapped. They also have allowed us to keep Tia in our room so that we can see her constantly. Even so, I think I can speak for Steph as well as me when I say that I will be relieved to be back at Rangeman. Neither of us will recover easily from this."

"How are you doing with it?" asked Ranger's mother. "I mean, in some ways it was similar to what you went through with Julie."

"I know", said Ranger. "Both Steph and I are getting professional help with what happened. We were talking to a therapist before from the fallout from Steph getting shot last December, and now this. When we return home, we have appointments every day to receive therapy for the first little while. I think that support will be invaluable as we learn to trust our safety again."

Ranger's mother breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm glad that you each are getting help. It must have been devastating to discover your baby missing."

"The hospital didn't handle it well either", said Ranger. "They didn't let us know that Tia was missing. I don't know when they were planning on telling us. Steph couldn't settle after Tia was put in the nursery and, about twenty minutes after she had been kidnapped, Steph couldn't take it anymore. She said she had the feeling that Tia was in trouble and she was frantic to see Tia and reassure herself that Tia was alright. I walked with her over to the nursery, and that's how we found out that Tia was missing. She had been gone for almost half an hour before we found out.

"The security staff were particularly unresponsive and unhelpful. They stonewalled the investigation and refused to share information with us. I had to lead them through the steps they needed to take, and Joe and I together were telling them what to do and when to do it. Steph had to deal with the hospital administration, and she also told them what we needed and what we were going to do. When we came back from finding Tia, the hospital again tried to put Tia back in the nursery. We refused to let them. We've had to threaten them a couple of times with taking our story to the media, but the result has been that we've been allowed to care for our baby the way we need to."

"You do what you need to be able to look after your baby", said Ranger's father. "Tia and you two are the most important people here, and the hospital administration will just to have to deal with that."

"It's hard", I said. "Being confrontational is not something that comes easily to me. I'm more the kind of person that wants everyone to get along and will go along with things that I don't want just so I don't rock the boat. However, I don't think I could cope if Tia was in the nursery."

"If the hospital insisted on it", said Ranger, "I would have hired Tracy and taken Tia back to our house and looked after her there." He turned to his parents. "As it is, I will want to take Tia out of this hospital the minute we are allowed to."

"I can understand that", said Grandma Rosa. She looked at me. "Has your family seen Tia yet?"

I smiled. "My grandmother tried to yesterday, but we told her no and Ranger walked her off the property. Like with you, we asked my family to stay away until today, so that we had some time to settle with just the three of us, and to give thanks for our ability to be together as a family. Now that we have settled a bit and aren't so panicky, we are happy to share Tia. However, all the Rangeman and Trenton Police staff who were in on the search yesterday saw her. We lined everybody up and let them file past her bassinet when she was back and safe. We thought that was important for their own feelings of comfort."

"What about the woman who stole her?" said Ranger's father.

"She's still on the loose", said Ranger. "She had a baby three months ago, and her baby died. Unfortunately, her husband died the same day, so he isn't there to help her through her difficulties. Her mother died six months ago, so she isn't there to help her either. Meanwhile, Yvette is suffering. She believes that her baby is alive and is being kept in the nursery. She can 'hear' her baby cry and can 'see' her baby lying beside her. What the doctors think happened was that she somehow walked off the floor and down to the nursery, took Tia, and left the hospital. How she got off the locked floor in the psych ward I don't know, let alone how she got past the nurses on the maternity floor, the pediatric nurses in the nursery, or the security guards at the front entrance. I also don't know why the taxi driver didn't clue in that something was wrong. There were all sorts of points in what happened where it would have been easy to stop the chain of events. What we do know is that she's a very sick woman who is on the loose, and we don't know where she is. Rangeman staff and the TPD are doing a manhunt today to try to find her."

"It's hard when people are so short-staffed", said Ranger's mother. "There simply aren't enough nurses to look after everyone properly."

"Then that needs to stop", said Ranger. "Would-be parents deserve to expect their children to be cared for properly and protected fully. Babies are vulnerable. Similarly, so are the patients in the psych ward. Some of them are living in a fictional world and are unable to care for themselves. Patients are at the hospital for a reason, and they need to be taken care of properly. If the hospital has too many patients, they need to increase the number of staff. I don't think it is fair for patients to have to accept substandard care at a time when they are most vulnerable and need the most help."

"I think that is easy to say but harder to do", said Ranger's father.

"That may be", said Ranger. "I donate a lot of money to this hospital, but I have to say that I'm not impressed by it."

"While we are angry", I said, "we are mostly angry at the security staff. From what we've seen, the nurses are trying to do the best job they can. They are caring and worried about Tia. The doctor that was on-call last night had a bit of a god-complex, but the doctor today was nice. Staff are doing the best that they can. They are just incredibly short-staffed. The person we are angry with is the security guard that called a taxi for Yvette to carry her out of the hospital. He should have known something was wrong and gotten her the care she needed before she left."

My grandmother led my parents into the room. "You hoo!" she said in a loud voice. Tia woke up and started to fuss.

I pasted on a smile. "Hi, guys", I said. "We have to keep our voices down. Preemies need a quiet and peaceful environment without much stimulation. They get overwhelmed easily."

Ranger picked up Tia and put her on his shoulder. She didn't settle though. I tried to settle her and she wouldn't settle for me either. My grandmother tried to take her from me, and I glared at her and then turned to Ranger. "Why don't we try some kangaroo care, but I can't do it."

Ranger smiled. "You mean you want me to whip my top off in front of your grandmother?"

"I think she'll settle that way." I paused. "I meant Tia, but my grandmother might settle too."

Ranger laughed, kissed me, and then stripped his top off. My grandmother took a deep breath. When Ranger was reclining against the bed, I took Tia's nightie off and placed her, tummy against his chest, on him. He whispered things in Spanish to her, and she settled almost immediately. I grabbed a blanket from the bed and covered Ranger and Tia up so that they didn't get cold – and to protect Ranger from my grandmother's gaze.

"That's amazing", said my mother. "I never tried that with you kids. I never thought that you would settle by allowing the baby to sleep skin-to-skin."

"It's good for all babies but is considered especially good for preemies", I said. "It's supposed to encourage a bond with the parent."

"Let me try", said my grandmother. She moved to take her top off.

"No!" I said. "This is something that will be reserved for just me and Ranger. I don't want anyone else doing kangaroo care with her."

"Hunh", said my grandmother in disgust. Her lip stuck out in a little pout, and she subsided into a resentful silence. "I just want to try it", she said.

"No", I said. "As I said, this is something just for Ranger and me. It makes sense that we, as parents, form the strongest bond with the baby."

"I notice that Amelia was sitting outside your door", said my mother. She was obviously trying to head off the snit that my grandmother was in.

"Yes. Amelia, in addition to being Tia's nanny, is a trained bodyguard. She is getting to know Tia, but she is also here bodyguarding her as well. Between Ranger and Amelia, they stood guard last night so that I could sleep and be assured that nothing would happen to Tia while I was resting."

"Hunh. I bet you let her practice kangaroo care with Tia", said my grandmother.

Ranger's mother glared at my grandmother for a second before turning back to us again. "Does she have experience at working with children?" she said.

I smiled. "Mellie is actually taking her Early Childhood Educator degree right now, and is doing very well in the courses. She has taken her Infant First Aid and CPR courses, and is a natural at working with kids. She is more qualified than most people who look after children, including Ranger and me. She is an excellent addition to the family."

"But she's not really family", said my grandmother. "I'm more important to the baby just because she is my great-granddaughter than Amelia will ever be."

I gritted my teeth as I smiled again. I thought my cheeks were beginning to hurt from smiling so much, and I wondered if my smile looked as fake as it felt.

My grandmother sat forward on her seat, and her beady eyes looked bright with excitement. "So tell me all about the kidnapping. What was it like? How did you find out something was wrong? How did you find her?"

I went over everything that had happened. "Oh, that's good", said my grandmother. "I can tell everybody that you have a psychic link with the baby."

"Grandma!" I said. "I haven't developed a psychic link with her. It was just something that made sense to me."

"But you could have a psychic link to her. After all, she is your child. That's what I'll tell everyone."

"Grandma, do NOT tell anyone that I have developed a psychic link with Tia. It isn't true."

"But it makes such a good story."

"But it isn't true. Saying that you had a lobotomy that went wrong makes a good story as well, but that also isn't true and saying it would be spreading lies."

My grandmother shut up for a moment. About four weeks before, my grandmother was up to her usual tricks and was making up stories and spreading them as fact, and I got very upset. Ranger told her that, if she continued to spread stories, he would tell everyone that she'd had a lobotomy that had gone wrong, and that's why she'd lost her marbles and was spreading lies.

"You could have a psychic connection and not even been aware of it", said my grandmother finally.

"And you could have had a lobotomy that went wrong, and that's why you are spouting nonsense."

"Nonsense! I'll have you know that my gossip is very well-sourced."

"The back of the bathroom door does not count as well-sourced", I said. "What is written on the back of the stall doors is mostly fictitious."

Grandma looked down at the ground as she thought about that. "I don't know. I've read some believable things in the bathroom before."

"Grandma, you should just give it up. You lie like a cheap rug anyway, so you might as well stop trying. Everybody knows that you aren't telling the truth."

"Some people believe me. After all, they read the bathroom stalls as well."

"Are you writing on bathroom stalls again?" I said.

"No", said my grandmother. "Your mother won't let me carry a pen around in my purse any longer. She won't let me carry a pen, and she won't let me carry a gun. What is the world coming to? After all, the pen is mightier than the sword, and the gun is mightier than the pen."

"I'm glad Mom won't let you carry around your gun any longer. At the beginning of December you shot me and, if it wasn't for the fact that Mom had taken the bullets out of the gun, I would likely have died." My mother crossed herself. "As for the pen and your propensity to write on bathroom stalls, I don't particularly like going into the women's bathroom and reading about myself. I read a lot about myself when you said that I had slept with the entire football team. People called me all sorts of names, and I couldn't even go to the washroom to get away from the problems you created. Whenever I tried to escape to the bathroom to get some breathing room, there would be something new written about me on the stall and, quite frankly, it made me feel icky. I think 'slut' was the most common name assigned to me. Do not write anything else about me or about Ranger or about Tia in the bathroom or anywhere else. We don't need it. Do I make myself clear?"

My grandmother looked annoyed.

"I need your promise. And I need to see your hands. I don't want to take the chance that you are crossing your fingers behind your back."

My grandmother's lip stuck out in a pout again. I knew that she was going to try to pull a fast one, and she was frustrated because I had stopped her from doing it.

"I promise", she said.

"What do you promise?" I said. I didn't want her saying later that she had promised something that I had never intended and therefore get out of it that way.

"I promise not to write anything on the bathroom stalls."

"And you promise to always check in with us before you spread any stories and, if you do spread stories around, they will be truthful and you will not make up any details."

"But Steph…" said Grandma.

"That's my line in the sand", I said. "You have crossed that line too many times, Grandma, and I'm not willing to take that crap any longer."

My grandmother gave a long-suffering sigh and looked at me. "I promise", she said. I looked at her a little longer. "I promise not to spread stories unless they are true." She paused and brightened. "But you having a psychic link with Tia is true. Otherwise, how would you know where she was located? How would you know that she had disappeared?"

"Grandma, I have no more of a psychic link with Tia than I have with anyone else. I don't think that I knew that there was something wrong with Tia as much as knowing that it was time to feed her and she wasn't there. As for knowing where she was, I have many years of finding people. I have developed a sense of where people are."

"Oh, that's good. You're not just psychic about your daughter. You are psychic about people in general."

"Grandma! No!"

Ranger laughed and put his arm over my shoulders. My body was shaking with strain, and I felt like crying. He snugged me into his body. "Give it up, babe. Your grandmother is obviously too stupid to be able to tell the difference between fact and fiction, and you should feel sorry for her for being such an idiot."

"I am not an idiot!" said my grandmother.

I looked at my mother, and she had a little smile on her face. I looked at my father and he was grinning from ear to ear.

"I don't know", I said. "I think Ranger has a point. We teach children to accept everyone, even those who are low intelligence, and we shouldn't teach children that if we aren't willing to do that ourselves."

My grandmother flushed in anger. "I'm not stupid."

"You're the one that believes that I have a form of ESP", I said.


	17. Chapter 17

Morelli walked into the room. "How are you?" he said. He smiled at everyone but he searched my face.

I smiled again, but I could tell that Morelli saw that my smile was forced. I looked around. No one else seemed to have noticed.

"Good. We were just explaining that Grandma couldn't spread the news that I was psychic and that's how I knew that something was wrong with Tia."

Morelli laughed. "The only person I know that would believe that is Grandma Bella. And if Grandma Mazur tells Grandma Bella that, Grandma Bella will be just as likely to curse her as she would to believe her."

"Lula would believe me", said Grandma. Lula was my sometimes-sidekick that I went out with to capture skips. She was a former hooker who, because of some injuries inflicted by a john, was no longer able to ply her trade. She had picked herself up from that tragedy and became the file clerk at the bonds office. While she was largely incompetent as a file clerk, she was fun to take out skip-tracing and she had a unique viewpoint as to the way that skips thought.

Lula was another person, like my grandmother, who believed in psychics, aliens, signs from God and the power of horoscopes. While I agreed that they did exist, I didn't think they existed in the frequency that my grandmother and Lula found them.

Ranger obviously thought I needed a break from the conversation. "How did it go with the administration?" he said.

Morelli sat down. "There are a few people involved, and staff are scrambling because they know that people are going to be arrested for negligence. I'm looking through the timesheets and schedules to figure out who was on duty at the time, and I've been looking at security camera footage." He turned to us. "At this point, the hospital is putting three people up on probation – the duty nurse who opened the door for Yvette to leave the psych ward, the nurse on duty in the nursery who saw Yvette take the baby and didn't approach her to identify her, and the security guard who called her a cab so that she could leave with the baby. The first two, in my opinion could have happened because the staff are overworked and understaffed. With the nursery staff, all hands were looking after a baby in distress and they simply didn't have the manpower to adequately look after all their patients. A similar situation was true in the psych ward. The last, however, is who we will be arresting for negligence. It was entirely his fault that he called a cab for Yvette and didn't think anything of the fact that she was leaving in a hospital gown or carrying a naked baby."

"I'm glad he is being arrested", said Ranger's father. "He obviously doesn't have what it takes to be a security guard."

"When I talked to his partner, his partner said that he was nursing a very bad hangover and that's why he missed the obvious."

"That's no excuse", said Ranger. "If it was one of my staff, he would be fired for that kind of incompetence – or even just showing up at work with a hangover."

"And so he should be", said Ranger's mother.

A wave of anger washed over me, and I started to shake again. Ranger snugged me even closer to his side, and he turned his head to kiss the top of mine.

Morelli's phone rang, and he answered it and walked out of the room. Minutes later, he was back. He turned to Ranger and me. "Rangeman staff have searched eight different locations this morning, both checking out the houses as well as talking to neighbors. However, CrimeStoppers got a call in this morning that reported a sighting in Ewing Township. I just called Tank, and he said the location is the same as one that was on the list to be searched this afternoon. He has now sent both teams over to the house. I also got a call from my captain. Another baby has been kidnapped. The last known location of the baby is in the neighborhood of the house that Miguel and Dirk had identified, the same house that was reported on CrimeStoppers. I'll leave now and I'll report back after we capture this woman."

"I want to go", I said.

"You don't have to go, cupcake. You need to stay back and look after Tia. You don't need to be traipsing all over hell's half acres to see a woman who stole your baby."

"I need to see her."

"Babe, you don't need to see her", said Ranger. "I'll stay with you. We'll look after Tia together."

My eyes filled with tears. "I need to see her, Ranger."

"What do you need to see her for, cupcake?" said Morelli. "What good can possibly come from seeing her?"

"I don't know how to describe it. I just need to see her." I swiped some tears from my face.

Ranger looked up at Morelli, and Morelli looked at him. I shuddered in a breath, and Ranger rubbed my shoulder where he was resting his hand. "Okay, babe", he said. "We'll take Tia with us so that she isn't away from you in case you need to feed her."

I shuddered in another breath. "Thank you", I said.

Morelli looked at Ranger again. "I hope you know what you're doing, buddy."

Ranger smiled. "Nope. This is uncharted territory for me." He turned to the families. "I'm sorry, but if we are leaving, Steph needs to get dressed, Tia needs to get dressed and", he looked down at himself in consternation, "I need to get dressed. We appreciate you coming in, but we have to leave now."

"I'll come with you", said my grandmother.

"No, Grandma", I said. "Ranger's and my car will be full. Joe will come with us, and Mellie will come with us, and there will be Tia. That's five and a full car."

"Come on, Ma", said my mother. "We can go home and watch the news to see what is going on."

"We'll call you as well when we know what is happening", I said.

"Thanks, baby girl", said my mother. She gave me a kiss and a hug.

"Get that woman before she tries to kill another baby", said my father. He gave me a hug and a kiss.

"Yeah", said my grandmother. "Get that bitch and throw her in the slammer."

I sighed.

Ranger's family all stood as well. "Take care of yourself", said Ranger's mom as she gave me a kiss.

"We're rooting for you", said his father as he gave me a hug.

"I hope you get to go home soon", said his grandmother.

Ranger stood and handed Tia to me. He hurriedly pulled his shirt on and walked out to the nursing station. He told them what we were doing. "You can't do that", said the nurse. "We have to discharge you to let you leave the premises with Tia."

"I don't think you understand", said Ranger. "My wife and baby girl and I are leaving for an hour or two to help capture the woman that your staff let loose and let kidnap my baby girl. She is a very sick woman who needs to be brought back to the hospital. We think she has kidnapped another child, and we need to go before she tries to kill this one as well."

"I'll call the doctor."

"You can call whomever you want. However, we are leaving and will be back in an hour after we clean up your mess. I think the hospital administration should be thanking us." He turned around and walked back into our room as the nurse on duty called someone and looked after him in a panic.

By the time he had returned to our room, I had dressed Tia in her going-home outfit – it was the only outfit we had on us – and I had left her with Morelli so that I could change in the washroom. Seconds later, I had thrown the pair of yoga pants and the shirt on, the same ones that I had worn the day before, and slipped my feet into my canvas shoes. I wasn't wearing my going-home outfit. That was a dress that I had brought. I was wearing the clothes that I had worn to the hospital.

Ranger and Morelli and Amelia and I walked out of the hospital carrying Tia. She was sound asleep in my arms. Ranger turned to Morelli. "We'll follow you. I know that you'll want your own car."

"I'd prefer it. I wasn't sure if that was what you were thinking, however, when Steph was talking to Grandma Mazur."

"I made it up", I said. "I didn't think that anyone wanted my grandmother along for the ride, and some creative massaging of the facts meant that I was able to keep her away."

"Thanks, cupcake."

We got to Ranger's and my car, and Ranger took Tia from me. He opened the backseat and placed Tia in her infant car seat. Amelia slipped in beside her. "We'll follow you", I said to Morelli as I got into the passenger seat.

Morelli jogged down the parking lot until he got to his car. He got in and pulled out, and waited for us to follow him.

He drove fast to the location and, as we followed him, Ranger called Tank. "Hey", he said, "we're on our way. What do you have there?"

"We have identified that there is a woman in the house. ERT1 is behind the house, and ERT2 has the front covered. ERT1 has reported that they can see a woman with a baby. So far she is rocking and appears to be singing to the baby. We are waiting for Morelli as we monitor the situation."

"Are you there personally?"

"Yes. Hal and I came out immediately when we identified the location."

"Steph and Amelia and Tia and I are on our way. We're following Morelli. Our ETA is ten minutes."

"Okay. We'll wait unless the situation is starting to head south."

"Thanks."

I looked at Ranger, and he was retreating into the space he went to when he was heading out on a mission. He was growing still and focused. He was doing what I called getting in touch with his Zen, but I now knew was him meditating to get his head in the game. Amelia looked down at the baby and rested her hand on the baby's chest.

"When we get there", I said, "I was thinking that Amelia could stay in the car with the windows down, and cover up with one of the receiving blankets so that she can loosen off her top and let Tia lie on her chest. We know from the hospital that lying on one of us will help keep Tia's temperature at a constant level. She can come get me if Tia needs to be fed."

Ranger snapped back to the present. "That makes sense", he said. "I'm a little worried about Tia being away from her heated mattress."

"So am I, but I think she'll be okay. Hopefully she will be able to generate her own heat soon."

Ranger pulled into the community and followed Morelli to the house. There were a number of Rangeman and unmarked police vehicles parked up and down the street, and neighbors were leaving their houses to see what the commotion was all about.

"Whose house is this?" I said to Tank as we left the car and walked to the house.

"An old boyfriend's", said Tank. "Your team is good."

"Does the old boyfriend know that she's in his house?" said Ranger.

"No", said Tank. "Miguel said that her ex-boyfriend is currently in France on business and has been for the last three weeks. They are still friends, though, and talk regularly over Facebook. I think that's how Miguel found the link. They've been combing through all her social media to find potential contacts."

"Probably", I said. "Social media is a good source of potential places that suspects can be found."

"You would know", said Tank. "You are the capture queen." I made a face and he laughed. "All I can say is that I'm glad you've trained your staff as well as you have."

"That's true", said Morelli. "Who wants to go with me to the house?"

"I do", I said.

"Babe, she may be dangerous", said Ranger.

"I know that. She stashed our baby in a drawer and left her for dead. But she has someone else's baby in there, and I need to know that the baby is okay." My eyes filled with tears, and Ranger pulled me into his body. I fisted my hands in his shirt and concentrated on breathing as I willed back the tears.

He smoothed my hair away from my face and snaked his hand under my ponytail to massage the muscles at the back of my neck. I gulped a few times, and Ranger sighed. "Steph and I will accompany you to the door", he said. He turned to me. "But babe, if I say run, I want you to run. Deal?"

I shuddered in a breath. "Deal", I said.

He kissed the top of my head and stepped back. Tank handed the three of us ear pieces and we inserted them in our ears. I swiped the tears from my face and slid my hand in Ranger's. Flanked by Morelli and Ranger, I walked up to the door and rang the doorbell. We could hear the baby wailing, but we couldn't hear the woman coming to the door.

Morelli tried the door, but it was locked. Ranger turned around and motioned to Tank, and Tank came running. He realized what we needed when he got to the door, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out his picks. He handed them to Ranger and Ranger knelt down and inserted the picks into the lock. Seconds later, he opened the door and handed the lock picks back to Tank. "Guys", he said softly. I could hear him in front of me as well as over our comms. "Find a back door and pick that lock as well. We're entering the house, and we'll want backup."

Morelli opened the door. "Police", he yelled out. We walked in the house and approached the kitchen. Yvette was standing with a knife in her hand, her top undone, and was trying to breastfeed the baby.

"The baby won't feed. I can't stop him from crying."

"Yvette", said Morelli. "My name is Joe. I'm a police officer. That baby that you have isn't yours, and we need to give that baby back."

"It's my baby. It's my Oliver."

"That baby is hungry", said Morelli. "Can I take that baby from you?"

"NO!" she said. "He's mine!" She lifted up the knife and held it to the baby's neck. Morelli and Ranger froze. "People keep trying to take my baby away from me. If I can't keep my baby, no one will have him."

I pushed in front of them. "Hi, Yvette. I'm Stephanie. I'm a mother too. How old is your baby?"

"He's just a few months old."

"How many months? My daughter is only two days old."

"He's four months old."

"You must be very proud of him. He looks like a very good baby. Is he?"

"Yes, he is." She was starting to lose her panicked expression in her voice.

"What can he do now? My daughter is still just a lump of mush. She can't do anything yet."

"I don't know."

"Can he smile and laugh yet? I'm looking forward to when my daughter can smile and laugh."

"Yes, he can smile and laugh."

"That must be awesome. When did he start smiling and laughing?"

Yvette looked confused. "Three months ago?"

"That would be good. I won't have to wait long until she can smile and laugh. That will make it so much easier to care for her."

The baby's cries were getting more forceful as he started to grow frantic. His face turned red. "I think he's pooping his diaper", I said. As Yvette looked down at the baby, I eased closer to her. "Did you need to change his diaper? Is his change table upstairs?" Yvette looked confused again. I eased even closer to her. "Is Oliver able to sit up by himself?" Yvette looked down at the baby. "I want to know when babies can sit up. They become a lot more interesting when they can sit up, because if they can sit up, they can play with you. Do you feel the same?"

Yvette nodded.

"May I hold your baby while you get him a clean diaper? He looks like he is getting frantic."

"He's hungry."

"Can he eat solids?"

"No. He breastfeeds."

"Did it take him long to learn how to breastfeed? My daughter is just learning. She does a pretty good job considering she is only a couple of days old, but she is still learning. How long did it take your son to learn how to breastfeed?"

"He's still learning?"

"He's four months and he doesn't yet know how to breastfeed?"

"No."

"That's disappointing. I had hoped that my baby would learn before that. When is your son's birthday?" I eased closer again. I could almost touch him, could almost reach out and grab him, but although Yvette had eased up quite a bit, she still had that knife in her hand and she was still looking a little unpredictable.

"February fifth."

"February fifth? That means your son is only three months old."

"Yes."

"He's quite frantic. May I hold him? I've been told that I have the magic touch. Of course, my husband over there has even more of a magic touch. He can get my nephew settled better than anyone else, including my sister. I don't think my sister likes it, but even if she would prefer that she was the one that settles him, she is grateful that he can be settled at all. Of course, Edmund is particularly grumpy lately. He's been cutting his first tooth, and I think it is taking its toll on my sister and her husband."

"I can understand that. Oliver cried when he cut his first tooth as well."

"It has to be very traumatic for them. Besides getting shots done, they aren't prepared for that kind of pain. My mother used to rub whiskey on our gums when we were teething, but since my sister now has a drinking problem I don't think that is the best thing for me to do. I don't know if they are related or not, but I don't think I want to take the chance. What did you do for your son to help him through his teething?"

"I don't know."

"Well, if you remember any special trick, let me know." I reached out, and Yvette stepped back. "I'm just brushing his tears away from his face. His face is so wet. Do you have a tissue that I'd be able to dry his face with?"

Yvette glanced around her until she spotted the box of tissues. She put down the knife to walk over to the tissues, and she pulled a tissue from the box and wiped the baby's face.

Ranger and Morelli and I moved so that her return route to the knife was cut off.


	18. Chapter 18

A red dot from a sniper gun trained on Yvette. "Stand down", I heard Ranger say softly. The red dot disappeared again.

"What does your husband do?" I asked.

"He's a trucker. He delivers Coca-Cola products to the different stores around town."

"Does he like it?"

"Yes. He says he likes being out and about, and the job pays enough that I can stay at home with Oliver."

"That's good. Oliver will do well having you to look after him. What did you do before you had Oliver?"

"I was a daycare worker. I would go to work and dream about having my own baby."

"I can tell that you have a lot of love to give. Did you have to try for a long time before you got pregnant?"

"We did. We tried for four years. We called Oliver our miracle baby."

"I can see why you consider him your miracle. Did you have to do in vitro treatments to get pregnant?"

"No. We didn't have enough money to do that."

"It does cost a lot of money. I know a few people who've had to go through infertility treatments and it almost bankrupted them."

Yvette smiled.

"May I hold Oliver? I was wondering what it would be like to hold a bigger baby."

Yvette looked at me, obviously not sure, and I knew that I had to talk to her more to establish more trust before she would hand the baby over. And I knew that Morelli and Ranger were watchful and waiting until I got the baby away from her before they would arrest her. She was just too unpredictable as to what she'd do.

But she seemed to be relaxing a bit, and I thought that was a good sign.

"What is your favorite song to sing to Oliver?" I asked. "I don't know many songs. In reality, I'm not very prepared to be a mother, I guess."

"I like this song", she said. She held the baby in front of her. "Zoom, zoom, zoom, we're going to the moon. Zoom, zoom, zoom, we hope to be there soon. If you want to take a trip, climb aboard my rocket ship. Zoom, zoom, zoom, we're going to the moon. Five, four, three, two, one, blast off!" She thrust the baby into the air, and then caught him back in her arms and kissed his head.

I looked at her, shocked. I might just have had my mind in the gutter after four weeks of no sex, but the song sounded faintly sexual to me.

"Can I try that with him?" I said.

She smiled and handed the baby to me. "Zoom, zoom, zoom", I sang as Morelli and Ranger moved forward. "I'm going to the moon. Zoom, zoom, zoom", I paused. "What's next?"

"I hope to be there soon", said Yvette.

Morelli snapped a cuff around her wrist, spun her around, and restrained her other wrist.

"What the fudge?" said Yvette. She started to struggle and try to get to Oliver.

"I'm sorry", I said. "Oliver isn't yours."

"I'm arresting you for the kidnapping of Tia Plum and Conner Harley."

"I didn't kidnap anyone. That's my baby."

"I know you think that right now", I said. "But your baby died three months ago."

"Let's get him outside", said Morelli.

"Ranger? Can you take the baby?" I said. "He's a little heavy for me to carry having just given birth. He has to be about nine months old."

"Sure thing, babe", said Ranger. He took Connor from my arms and started to walk towards the door, and Connor immediately quieted.

"Wow", I said. "We should call you the baby whisperer."

Ranger let out a snort.

We walked outside the house and a woman stood at the side of the lawn. Tank was holding her back. "Connor!" she said, and Tank let her go. She ran over to her baby.

"This woman has had her identity confirmed?" said Morelli.

"Sure thing, Joe. We've had her with us at the station until we heard the call go out for backup", said another officer. "We've done the computer search and have confirmed her identity and the identity of her baby."

I walked over to the woman. "I think your son is hungry. Yvette didn't have any food suitable for a baby in the house."

"That bitch", said the woman. "God, how could she take my baby? I need to breastfeed Connor."

"I need to breastfeed as well", I said. "You're welcome to join me at our car and we can breastfeed together."

The woman shuddered in a breath. "I don't know if I will ever forgive the woman."

We walked over to the car, and Tia was frantic and bawling. I sat in the passenger seat and Amelia handed me the receiving blanket. She had already covered up. "Has she been crying long?" I said. I undid my shirt and bra, put Tia to my breast, and expressed a little milk into her mouth. She soon quieted and started to suck.

"Just a few minutes", said Amelia. "We had some nice snuggle time, but then she started rooting on me and I had to tell her that I loved her, but I wasn't a wet nurse."

I smiled as Amelia draped the receiving blanket over my chest to give me some privacy.

"What is wrong with that woman?" said the other mother. "How could she think that she was his mother?"

"She's sick", I said. "She tried for four years to get pregnant. Her mother died six months ago. She went into labor at twenty-six weeks, and her baby died shortly afterwards. Her husband died on the way to the hospital. Both deaths occurred three months ago. She has since become psychotic and honestly believes her baby is alive, and her husband is alive. The three deaths broke her. For whatever reason, she escaped off the psych ward at the hospital, walked down to the nursery, and stole my baby. My baby is only thirty-four weeks along and needed special care. She was gone from the hospital for nine hours before we got her back. She was almost dead when we found her. Luckily, she's a fighter and has bounced back quickly. Yvette seemed to have forgotten Tia and then took your baby thinking that Connor was her Oliver. She didn't do it because she was cruel. She did it because, in her mind, your baby was hers. She is very ill."

"How the hell did she get off the psych ward?"

"The staff there are overworked and understaffed. She was let out by mistake, just like the nurses at the nursery assumed that Yvette was Tia's mother and let her take Tia from the room. Apparently, when Yvette came in there was another baby in distress and the nurses recognized that someone was taking Tia but their attention was on the other baby and trying to save his life."

"And she just walked out?"

"That's where there was negligence and the person is going to be charged. The security guard called her a cab and let her go, despite her wearing a hospital gown and carrying a naked baby."

"That's terrible. Aren't you angry? I mean, your baby almost died!"

"Yes, I'm upset", I said. "However, I also recognize that it wasn't Yvette's fault. She is a very sick woman and she needs proper treatment. I hope she gets it but, I know, when she returns to her right mind she will be devastated by what has happened. From our research on her, we know that she is a nice person, a kind person, who has just been given a bad situation and is trying to deal with it the best that she can. She was devastated when her mother died. She and her husband had difficulty in getting pregnant and they considered Oliver their miracle baby. When he died and her husband died the same day, something inside her broke. I can understand that. If I was in the same situation, something inside of me would break as well. So while I am upset, I also pity her. She is in a terrible situation. When she is better, I will probably take Tia to visit her so that she knows that Tia is doing okay."

"I don't think I'm as accepting as you."

"Look, I work with felons every day. That's my job. I see all kinds. I see the truly evil, the truly depraved, and the truly stupid. I see people hyped up on drugs and I see people who have just responded to a bad situation. Yvette isn't one of them. She is honestly sick. She honestly thought your baby was hers. She honestly thought that she was caring for him adequately."

"Look at her though. She is going nuts." I looked over at her, and she was fighting hard and bawling. She was screaming that the police were taking her baby away from her, and she was frantic to get back to him. The paramedics stabbed her with a needle, and a few minutes later she quieted. Morelli undid her cuffs, the paramedics loaded her onto the stretcher, and Morelli cuffed her to the side. He handed another officer the keys to his car and climbed into the back of the ambulance. I knew that he had asked the other officer to drive his car to the hospital for him, and that Morelli would see Yvette safely taken back to the special care section of the lockdown psych floor. Those who were in that section were never let off the floor, and were constantly in view of the nursing station.

"She believes that we are taking her baby away from her. Think what you'd do if you were in the same situation as Yvette. Would you react logically, or would you break as well? Remember, those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks. It is quite possible that you might react the same way if you were in the same situation."


	19. Chapter 19

The police took Connor and his mother to the hospital for a check, but from what I could see, Connor was unharmed. The check would, however, reassure his mother. I hoped that, when the mother calmed down, she would find the compassion within her to forgive Yvette for what she had done. It truly wasn't Yvette's fault, and I hoped that Yvette would soon return to her own mind.

Ranger drove Amelia and Tia and me back to the hospital as well. We arrived back just two hours after we left, and the nurses and the doctor on call were upset and milling around. Hospital administration was there as well, and when they saw us the CEO of the hospital strode forward angrily. "We have tried to provide care to your baby and your wife", Thomas said. "You have repeatedly refused it. When Tia got back yesterday, you refused to let Tia be cared for in our nursery. You demanded a private nurse and for Tia to be cared for in your room. We accommodated that. Then, today, against our recommendation, you took the baby from the hospital. That is unacceptable. We will discharge you and let you fend for yourself."

I looked at Ranger, and he looked pissed. I mean, he had his poker face on and most people wouldn't pick up on how angry he was. But all his little tells were there. He was standing on the balls of his feet, ready to fight. His shoulders were rigid and his hands were fisted. Lines of strain bracketed his mouth and his expression in his eyes was 'not happy'. I was just as mad, and I stood back to let Ranger express his anger. I didn't think that I'd be able to talk to the hospital administrator without breaking into tears.

"First of all, Tia was kidnapped out of your nursery out of your staff's negligence", said Ranger quietly. "Your staff proved to be incompetent at security measures. We would be remiss as parents to let our daughter be cared for again in that nursery. My wife and I were traumatized by our daughter's disappearance and, to soothe my wife, it was imperative that she was within reaching distance of our daughter. As well, with having her in the room with us we could assign a bodyguard and not have that bodyguard get in the way of the nursery staff. Second of all, we didn't just leave the hospital for a joy ride. The police found Yvette, the lady who walked off the psych ward. That was another example of your staff incompetence. We went to talk to her. She had stolen another baby, and for our own mental health we needed to see her get caught and arrested. Without that closure, we would always be terrified that our baby would be kidnapped again. We took the baby with us so that she could be fed. She needs feeding every two hours, which meant that she couldn't be without my wife to feed her. My wife was able to talk to Yvette and get the new baby away from her safely before she was arrested. When we got there, Yvette had been holding a knife to the baby's throat. So I'm sorry you didn't like it, but we left so that we could help arrest the woman that _your_ staff let leave the hospital with _my_ baby. We were cleaning up _your_ mess and, if you continue to deny our baby access to care, that will be what we tell the media."

"I don't think…"

"…that's the problem", said Ranger. "You aren't thinking. Talk to your PR department before you make any decisions as to what is appropriate for you to do. In the meantime, let's test Tia to see if she has been able to maintain her own body temperature."

The doctor moved to take Tia's carrier from Ranger's hand, and Ranger looked at Amelia. "Mellie, please accompany Tia and make sure she remains safe."

"Sure thing, Ranger", said Amelia.

Ranger turned to Tracy. "Tracy, please take Steph to our room and check her over."

"Sure, Ranger."

Ranger turned back to the hospital administrator. "Let's go into Steph's room to talk about my company's donations to this hospital and the improper use of funds. I would suggest that your PR person is in on the conversation."

"You donate money to the hospital?" said the administrator.

"My company donates over six hundred thousand annually to the hospital", said Ranger. I could see the administrator stand up straighter and smile ingratiatingly. "I think that I should pull the funding due to your lack of competence and downright arrogant attitude. A hospital has to put the patients first, and in my experience your hospital had consistently failed in fulfilling that duty. Staff are overworked and underpaid and unhappy. Security measures are dismal. Leadership is ineffective and inept. If this was my business, I would fire all administration and start again with people who are prepared to put the patients first. Let's talk about that."

The administrator looked worried, and I smiled at Ranger, slipped my hand in his and squeezed slightly. I tiptoed up and gave him a kiss. "Shoot him with both barrels", I said in his ear.

Ranger smiled slightly. "I will", he said quietly. He slung his arm over my shoulders and walked with me into my room. The hospital administrator meekly followed and, when he got there, he called Candace to ask her to come to the room.

Tracy checked me over as we waited for Candace. We had the administrator turn his back as Tracy checked my stitches. "They look good", she said as I changed into a hospital gown again. "They don't look like they have pulled at all."

"Thank God", I said. "They are starting to become more painful."

"You'll find that. The discomfort peaks around the third and fourth day, and then it gets a lot better. There is a bathtub in your suite. A little later, when you don't have company, we'll give you a sitz bath and that will help the discomfort and will speed healing as well. In the meantime, I can give you a pain reliever."

"That would be great", I said.

"You?" said Ranger. "I can tell that they are particularly uncomfortable for you to accept a pain reliever. You never take pain relievers. You didn't even use one during delivery."

"I know", I said. "I had read a lot about how babies were sleepier after they were born when epidurals were used. I just thought that Tia was already getting a difficult start with being born prematurely. She didn't need another strike against her."

"You did good, Stephanie", said Tracy. "Whatever you did, Tia is a healthy little girl who has been recovering well from the trauma of her birth." She took my vitals. "Your blood pressure is a little elevated, but I'm not surprised with the afternoon you've had."

I smiled sadly. "I think it was elevated from having to deal with my grandmother. Talking a mentally-ill patient down for her intent to kill a baby afterwards was a walk in the park."

"Did you really have to talk her down?" said Tracy. She told the administrator that he could turn around again as Candace walked into the room.

"I did", I said. "We had a nice chat, but she didn't understand that the baby that she was holding wasn't hers. She had a daycare background, but was unable to see that the nine-month old baby that she was holding wasn't her newborn that died three months ago. She is really struggling and desperately needs help."

"Hopefully she will get that help now", said Ranger. "The good news is that she will now be held in the area for criminals on the psych floor, and this means that she cannot be let off the floor by mistake again."

"That would be good", I said. "I feel very sorry for Yvette. I can understand why the deaths hit her so hard. If my baby and my husband died the same day, I think that I would also break into a million pieces." I turned to Ranger. "After Yvette returns to her own mind, do you think that we could take Tia to visit her? I think it will do her good to see that Tia is thriving. I imagine that she will feel very guilty."

Ranger smiled. "I love your compassion and ability to think about others", he said. "Yes, once Yvette is healthy again we can certainly bring Tia for a visit. I will want to make sure that she is perfectly healthy again first though."

I nodded. "So will I. I don't want to put Tia in danger. I just want to help Yvette get better and I think that, at a certain point, it would be helpful for Yvette to know that we don't hold a grudge and that we accept that she wasn't acting in her right mind. I don't think that we should lose sight of that."

"I'm sure the courts won't as well", said Ranger. "She will be taken care of."

"She's a kind person. I could tell that. When she returns to her right mind, she'll be devastated by what she has done."

"Babe, you don't have to convince me. I agree that it will be the best thing for Yvette, no matter how challenging it will be for us."

"It will, but nobody said life would be easy. Sometimes the right road to take is the hardest."

He kissed me. "I know."

Tracy smiled, said that she'd get the pain reliever, and left the room.

"Do I understand it correctly that Yvette is now back in the hospital?" said Candace. She smiled. "That's great news."

Ranger gave her an overview of everything that had happened, from the start of Tia being taken to our return from arresting Yvette.

"Whew", said Candace. "Thank God you were there."

"The hospital wants to kick us out because our baby was kidnapped and we left the hospital to care for her, and because we left today to get the other kidnapped baby back."

"What!?" Candace turned to the administrator. "Thomas, if you kick this couple out of the hospital even one minute before they are cleared to leave, I will quit my job. I cannot run point when the administration makes stupid decisions like that."

"It just made sense. They were refusing treatment."

"Let me get this headline straight. 'Hospital refuses treatment of couple who saves lives of two babies'. Is that the headline you want?"

Thomas turned red.

She turned back to Ranger and me in disgust.

"I wanted to talk about the misuse of funds", said Ranger.

"Pardon?" said Candace.

"I'm a major donor to this hospital and, as a major donor, I get a copy of the annual audit of the accounts. If I remember correctly, this hospital is running a profit."

Candace's mouth dropped open. "You're a major donor?"

"I might not be for too much longer", said Ranger.

She turned white.

"So, according to the report sent out to all donors, the hospital is running in the black. While I applaud your ability to have money left over at the end of the day to do things like make investments, I cannot support a hospital that does it on the backs of the employees. Staff is overworked. There simply isn't enough staff to support the number of patients. The whole reason that Yvette was allowed to walk off the floor and the nursery staff didn't pay enough attention to Yvette taking Tia from her bassinet was solely because there wasn't enough staff to adequately look after the patients. Add in the failure of the security system and the inept security staff, and this hospital has been ripe for a disaster to happen."

"You think our security system is ineffective?" said Candace. "I always thought it was good."

"There is only one security camera per floor, and it is located at the elevators to show people getting onto and off the floor. There is no camera on the stairs. That isn't enough. Security cameras should be recording every common area of the hospital – all hallways, stairwells, elevators, waiting rooms and lounges. The only rooms that should be exempt are places where there is nudity, for example the individual hospital rooms and the bathrooms. Security staff should be trained adequately. The person who called the taxi for Yvette and helped her escape with the baby should be fired immediately. I hope that he is charged with negligence and incompetence. For areas like the maternity ward, there should be someone available at all times to check the baby's hospital bracelet and compare the bracelet to the mother's before the mother is able to take the baby off the floor. There are so many points that what occurred could have been avoided, but adequate staff is the beginning."

"We've never had a problem before."

"It only takes once", said Ranger. "Other hospitals in the country haven't had a problem before either, but they have adequate protections in place. Babies are so vulnerable, and they need to be cared for in a safe environment."

"How do you know about security systems?" said the administrator. I wondered if he was related to the security staff. He had the same pugnacious attitude. "It's not like you're trained in it."

Ranger smiled. "Actually, I am. I've designed some of the most complex security systems in the country and I own a security company here in Trenton, with offices in Miami, Boston, Raleigh, Nashville, Little Rock and Atlanta. I know security systems."

Morelli walked into the room, came over to me and gave me a hug. He kissed me on my cheek. "You okay, cupcake?" he said.

"Yeah", I said. "I was just listening to Ranger explain to Candace and Thomas that he actually did know security systems. I don't think he's had to promote his abilities in years."

Morelli smiled and turned to the hospital staff. "Ranger is the preeminent security specialist in the country. He has designed some of the most famous and secure systems in the world. You'd do well to listen to his overview of your system. People normally have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get his opinion."

Candace looked at Ranger with more respect. Thomas looked frustrated. I don't think he liked us telling him that his security system failed to protect the hospital's patients.

"So you have an ineffective security system, something that could be fixed somewhat easily, and overworked staff, which is also something that could be fixed easily", said Ranger.

"What would you do to the hospital to make it more secure?" said Candace.

"I would install an adequate number of security cameras. I would put reception desks on each of the floors where patients are the most vulnerable, so the areas I can think of right away are the pediatric ward, the psych ward and the maternity unit. And most of all, I would get rid of all the security staff and outsource so that you are getting better trained guards. I asked the guards yesterday as to what kind of training they had, and they didn't have any special training. I know my guards go through a week of specialized training before they are ever placed onsite, and they go for annual refresher courses. What happened in the hospital yesterday, when Yvette was helped in her escape, simply would not have happened if it had been one of my security guards.

"Besides that, I would hire the number of nursing staff needed to properly look after the patients. They are your first line of defense in keeping the patients safe."

"Where are we supposed to come up with the money for that?" said Thomas.

"I don't know", said Ranger. "You could ask the city for more, you could charge more for services or, even, you could reduce your salary. You personally, if I remember correctly, earn over five hundred thousand annually, and that would hire about seven more nurses and, quite honestly, you'd get better service out of the nurses."

Thomas turned red again.

Ranger turned back to Candace. "So that, if I am asked, will be what I tell the media."

Candace looked at us. "I understand your frustration with the system here. What can we do to improve your experience?"

Ranger sighed and looked at me. "Continue to keep Tracy as a private nurse and continue to allow Tia to be looked after in our room. My wife and I need that to feel comfortable and safe. We should not have to leave the floor again, thankfully, so you don't have to worry about us that way. Let us stay in the hospital until Tia is discharged. I know that you often discharge the mother before the baby when the baby is a preemie. My wife and I will want to be with the baby every hour that she is in here, so that we can have a guard assigned to her and, when the guard is sleeping, we can look after her ourselves. I think our requests are reasonable considering the difficulties our daughter has faced in her short life."

"Done", said Candace. "We will also continue to provide telephone, internet and television service to your room."

"Thank you", said Ranger.

"I'm sorry that your experience with our hospital was not as positive as you deserved", said Candace. "I understand your frustration with the lack of nursing staff. It is a problem that many hospitals have in the country. It is a frustrating problem that us, as administrators, have as well."

"If I remember correctly", said Ranger, "the hospital was running five million in the black. Now, I know that the number of nursing staff that it would cover is a drop in the bucket for the number of nurses needed, but it would help cover the shortfall and would be a step in the right direction."

"You remember well", said Candace. "I'll personally talk to the Board and pass your recommendation along. There is one thing for sure – changes have to be made to help us recover from this debacle."

"It's the only way you won't be crucified in the media", I said.


	20. Chapter 20

After Thomas and Candace left, Tracy prepared a sitz bath for me to sit in. Ranger helped me change out of my gown and lifted me into the bath, and I sighed in relief as the warm water soothed my sore bits.

After fifteen minutes, Ranger helped me out of the bath again, dried me off, and helped me dress in a clean gown. He lifted me and carried me back to the bed. "I could have walked", I said.

Ranger smiled. "Yeah, you could have. But it is so much fun to carry you, and you looked a little uncomfortable walking yourself."

He gently placed me on the bed, and Tracy came into the room with an icepack. She had already wrapped the icepack in a towel. "This will help soothe the soreness", she said. "You are still quite swollen around your stitches, and that is causing some of the discomfort."

Tears came to my eyes at her kindness. "Thanks", I said.

"Are you really uncomfortable?" said Ranger. He looked concerned.

I swiped away the tears. "A bit. I'm just having trouble dealing with it right now. Normally, I would be able to cope with it easily. I mean, objectively speaking, it isn't any more uncomfortable than when I got shot last December, or when I was stabbed in February, or even when I was shot in the ass a few years ago. But it just seems like the straw that broke the camel's back right now. I feel overwhelmed and like I can't cope."

"What can I do to help?"

"Could we snuggle, just the three of us? That seems to be the only thing that soothes me."

"Absolutely. Let's have you do some kangaroo care with Tia, and I'll snuggle into your side." I scooted over to the side of the bed so that there would be room for Ranger, and I undid the ties on my gown so that Tia could lie on my chest. "When you were having your bath, Tracy said that Tia is starting to get jaundice and they would like to start phototherapy on her if she gets worse."

"Will Tia be okay?"

"Yes", said Ranger as he removed Tia's hospital gown and placed her on my chest, skin to skin. "About eighty percent of preemies have jaundice, and it is easily treatable. However, they won't discharge her until she is over this hump. When she is, she will be discharged. She has passed all her other milestones." He climbed onto the bed beside me and lay on his side. He draped his arm over my waist. "It seems so weird to feel your stomach soft and relatively flat after feeling the baby in there for the last few months."

I smiled in reflex. "So jaundice is the only reason they are keeping her in the hospital?"

"Tracy said that, at this point, it is a mild case. It usually peaks between two and four days after the birth and, if Tia was a term baby, they wouldn't even consider giving her phototherapy. I think they are for two reasons, however. They are because she is a preemie, and complications are more likely when she is a preemie. They are also being extra careful with her because of the quality of care that we've received since we arrived here. They don't want to take the chance that another mistake happens to us. I think they are very concerned that I will go to the media and report on our negative experience."

I huffed out a laugh. "As if you'd do that."

Ranger smiled. "I know that and you know that, but the hospital doesn't and, if it gets us better care, I am quite willing to let the hospital believe that we are media hounds."

"Joe knows something is up with me. He knows that I'm not feeling good."

"I know. I talked with him about it when I walked him to the elevator this morning. He's as worried about you as I am."

Tears came to my eyes again. "You don't have to worry about me. I'll be fine."

"Babe, like me, Joe can see how you are struggling. There's no shame in that. We want to be there for you, and to help you over this hump. Just like Tia needs a little extra care right now, so do you. And that's okay."

"It's just that you're not the only one that has been struggling in the past few months. Me getting shot was hard on both of us."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Ranger looked guilty. "I've been laying my own upset on your shoulders and making things more challenging for you."

"First of all, you haven't made things more challenging for me. I've been worried about you, but you have always been there for me, no matter what. I just wasn't as ready to talk about it as you were. Livy told me that you'd be there to talk to and she'd be there to talk to when I was ready."

"I'm always available to listen."

"I know. You have always been."

"What was it about the shootings that upset you?"

I paused as tears flowed down my face. "I'm sorry", I said as Ranger swiped the tears away with his thumb. "My emotions are so close to the surface. It feels like I have all these strong, horrible feelings bursting out of me, and there is nothing I can do about it."

"That's okay, babe. I understand."

I snorted. "Then you understand more than me."

Ranger smiled and kissed my cheek.

"It just seemed that, last December, everything happened at once. I was shot those two times and, when I was, I started to feel like a terrible mother, like I was too pathetic a person and too worthless to have a baby. After all, I had put my baby in danger and she wasn't even born. I began to feel like I didn't deserve Tia. Then, at Christmas, Val said all the things to me that I was thinking myself. She told me that I would fail as a mother just like I had failed in everything else in my life. She said that I was too contemptible a person to keep you interested in me, and that the only reason that you were with me was because of the baby. She said that getting shot was proof that my baby would die from my own negligence. I felt like the most loathsome creature in the world, and I was filled with shame like I have never experienced before. Val was wrong to say those things, but she was only reiterating what I already thought about myself. She was only confirming that other people thought the same as I thought and, because she said those statements out loud, I thought that meant they were true."

"Oh, babe. Val is the only person that thinks that way, and she is as wrong as you are in thinking like that."

"Anyway, I struggled to stay upbeat. I felt very negative about myself, but I could hide how I felt and pretend that I was an okay person. I felt fragile but was coping. I kept saying to myself that although I wasn't a good person, I still provided a valuable service. I knew I was good at my job and I relied heavily on it for my self-confidence."

"And then you were pulled from work because of the preeclampsia."

"Yes. I was told to take the time off around the time I was locked in the freezer, and knowing I had put our baby at risk again was the final straw. Val was making pot shots at me which, essentially, I agreed with, my grandmother was spreading stories about me which made me feel even more like a laughingstock of a person, and I was unable to do anything to confirm my own value to myself. It was a lethal combination, and that's when my tenuous hold on a positive or neutral mood disintegrated."

"So you've been struggling with depression since the middle of March?"

"Yes, but it has just been getting worse over time. I kept telling myself that I would prove to everyone that I was a good mother by carrying the baby to the thirty-seventh week mark. But then a month ago I started going into and out of labor. That's when Livy started talking to me about going on medication."

"Why didn't you?"

"I thought it would prove that I was inept as a mother, that I was such a loser that I had to go on drugs to get through one of the most natural states in a woman's life."

"That's not true though, babe. You are not inept and you are not a loser. To me, you are a hero. You have chosen to live without medication for the supposed good of your baby. You have chosen to suffer through being ill in the belief that it is better for our baby. But although commendable, it's a false thought. It isn't better for the baby if you are mentally ill. However, you made the best decision you could with the information that you had at the time. I can't fault you on that. You were just being a good mom."

I shuddered in a sob.

"Babe, you are a great mom. You'd do anything to protect Tia. You love her so much. But you don't have to feel this way. Gabriel said that there are medications you can take while you are breastfeeding. I think it would be a good idea for you to go on one."

"I've failed."

"What have you failed at? You have carried a baby through a difficult pregnancy. You have delivered a healthy baby girl. What have you failed at?"

"These are supposed to be some of the happiest days of my life, and I can't stop crying."

"Babe, you can't help your feelings. They just are. It's what you do with those feelings that matter. You need to stand up and take control of your life, say feeling this way isn't right, and admit that you don't deserve to feel bad. You need to take the steps to feeling better. Because this? Feeling as sad as you are? It's just your body letting you down. This is not who you are. Who you are as a person is someone who is upbeat and positive and can see the good in life. You're someone who has a great sense of humor and is able to laugh off life's difficulties. The fact that you can't right now shows that something is wrong. You don't deserve to feel this way."

I shuddered in another breath. "Maybe this is punishment for being the reject that I am."

"Babe, you aren't a reject. You are the most wonderful person in the world, and being ill is not punishment. It's not a character fault or a weakness, or anything else that you may want to dress it up as. It just is, and you need to take control of it."

I turned on my side and snuggled Tia between Ranger and me. And I buried my face in his shoulder and cried like my heart was breaking.

Ranger smoothed my hair from my face and let me cry and, when I fell asleep, he hugged me a little longer before removing Tia from my arms and putting her back in her bassinet.

When I woke up, Ranger was unpacking a container of lasagna and a salad each for Amelia, me and himself. He'd also bought juices and milks. I was glad. I was especially thirsty but then I'd always found that I was thirstier after a good cry.

Ranger's face lightened as he looked at me. "Feel better?" he said.

"A bit, thanks." I looked over at Tia's bassinet. "Where's Tia?" My heart went into my throat and I started to panic.

"Shh. She's with Amelia in the nursery getting assessed. They had to take her in there so that she could be weighed. They are taking her vitals at the same time. They turned off the heated mattress in her bassinet, and they think she is maintaining her own body temperature now. They said we'd have to keep her clothed a little more than is typical for a new baby to help keep her warm, and they said that she'd like being swaddled more than most babies just because she is a preemie. However, once this phototherapy does its thing, they think she'll be able to go home."

Tracy carried Tia through to our room. "She's doing so well. When she was born she was four pounds, three ounces. Last night she was down to three pounds, ten ounces just because she was starving and dehydrated. She is now up to three pounds, twelve ounces, which puts her in line with the standard weight loss seen in most newborns. Everything else checked out. We did her vision test and her hearing test, and she did well on both. She seems to be maintaining her own temperature now. Part of the thing with Tia is that she's a small baby. My guess is that she will always be a small person. But what this means is that, although she doesn't weigh much, because she is small she has some of the fat reserves that a larger baby might not have developed by now. She is a perfect little bundle.

"She doesn't need the heated mattress now, but we'll put her back on it tonight because we are going to put her under the lights and she will only be wearing a diaper then. She doesn't technically need to be under the lights but", she grinned, "the hospital administration has told the staff to be extra careful with her and make sure that she is taken especial care of." She laughed. "I don't know if it was the thought that you might go to the media or the thought that you might pull your funding – or both – but they are being particularly cooperative."

"I'm sorry", I said. "I hope this doesn't make your lives, as nurses, more challenging."

Tracy laughed. "Are you kidding? The nurses here are all on your side. Tia is our miracle baby who, despite the odds, is growing just the way that she should. If it weren't for her size, you would never know that she was a preemie. She doesn't have many of the other features that preemies often have. She came into this world making a statement, and from the first moment she gave her first wail you knew that she was going places. Her breathing was good and her ability to suck and swallow is excellent. The only reason we wanted to keep her in special care was because she couldn't maintain her own temperature. Now, she will feel the cold a bit more than a term-baby and will until she gets more fat under her skin, but she can maintain her core temperature when swaddled in a blanket. She is a superstar. I told you that when you delivered her, and I maintain that is still true now. She's doing so well."

"You must be getting tired", I said. "You've been on duty since Saturday night."

"I know, but I'm just working overtime. I actually am switching from nights to days, and was off from Sunday to tomorrow."

"You're working and helping us out on your days off?" I said. I felt terrible that she was giving up her time.

"I don't mind", said Tracy. "If I had minded, I wouldn't have volunteered to accompany you. Besides, I didn't have anything planned with my days off, and the hospital is paying me double time for my time looking after you. That's why, however, you've been able to designate me as your private nurse. I wasn't already on the roster."

"I'm sure you want to go home tonight", I said.

"It probably would be good", said Tracy. She smiled. "I have to do laundry."

Ranger looked at me. I nodded. He turned back to Tracy. "I think that Amelia, Steph and I can look after Tia tonight and, if we run into problems, the nurses are right across the hall."

"That's true", said Tracy. "I really don't think you'll run into problems. She is doing remarkably well." She smiled. "Having some time off would be especially good anyway. Detective Morelli and I are going to meet for coffee the first evening that I'm off, and if that evening could be tonight, all the better."

I smiled. I could see that Joe and Tracy would get along well, and I couldn't be happier for either of them.


	21. Chapter 21

Val, Albert and the kids came to see the new family member after dinner. I was nursing Tia when they walked in, and the kids hurried over to see their new cousin. "Can she play Barbies with me?" said Lisa.

"In a few years", I said. "She has to grow up a little bit first."

"She's so little", said Albert. "I don't remember our babies being that little."

"That's because they weren't", said Val. "Our babies weren't born prematurely. I was able to carry all our babies to term." She turned to me. "It must have been easy delivering Tia. She's so tiny."

I gritted my teeth and smiled. "That doesn't make the contractions any less. Your body still has to dilate ten centimeters, and it is the contractions which cause the dilation that hurt so much."

"Yes, but then you had to push the baby out. It's no wonder that the baby was delivered in twenty minutes. I mean, there must be some reason you had such a short labor. My shortest labor was twelve hours."

"Steph is just a natural", said Ranger. "She's good at having babies."

"Just like Val", said Albert. "Val is made for having babies. She has childbearing hips. Her body is supremely suited to having children." Albert noticed his wife glaring at him, and he looked perplexed as he tried to figure out what he'd said to garner that reaction.

"Steph has been working on building muscles to deliver the baby. That work that she did was obvious when she was in labor", said Ranger.

"It must be nice to be able to afford a personal trainer", said Val.

"That's it", said Ranger. His voice was quiet, and I could tell that he was extremely angry. "I've had enough of your jealous pot-shots, Val. I'm sorry you aren't happy and you hate where you are in your life. But that doesn't mean that you should take it out on Steph. She has done nothing to deserve your attitude."

Val looked at him and blinked a few times.

Albert turned to his wife with tears in his eyes. "You aren't happy?" he said. "You don't like where you are in your life?"

"Of course I am happy", she said. But she had that fake tone to her voice that showed that she was lying.

Albert looked at Val for a moment, and stood suddenly. Tears flowed down his cheeks. "I never wanted to make you unhappy, Val. I'm sorry. I would do anything for you." He sobbed once. "I'll leave tonight." He ran out of the hospital room as Val stood and stared after him in shock.

She turned to us. "Thank you very much." She looked after Albert again. "Now what am I supposed to do?"

"Val, you've been unhappy for a while", I said. "Maybe this is the best thing."

"I can't be divorced twice. What will people say if I can't even keep someone like Albert?"

A wave of anger washed over me. "Albert is a good man, Val", I said. "He is kind-hearted and compassionate. I have never met someone who tries as hard as he does to do the right thing. He is sensitive and considerate of other people's feelings. Add on top that he loves you with everything he has, he thinks the world rises and sets on you and, in his eyes, you can do no wrong. He is proud of you and you could not find someone who loves or is proud of your kids more. Don't you dare put down that man in front of me because, quite frankly, you are just being a bitch and Albert deserves so much better than you."

Val stared at me and tears came to her eyes. "Oh, God", she said. "I really screwed up, didn't I?"

I just looked at her.

"I've got to go", she said. "I've got to go after him. Can I leave the children here?"

"I'll call Mom and have her come to pick them up and take them home."

Val smiled through her tears. "Thanks, Steph. You're a lifesaver." She thrust Edmund into Ranger's arms, turned and ran out of the room. I could see through the door Val dancing impatiently at the elevators and, when the doors opened, I could see her run inside and repeatedly jab at the elevator buttons.

"Will Mom and Albert be alright?" said Angie, my thirteen-year old niece.

I looked after Val again and sighed. "Honestly, sweetie? I don't know. I hope so, but I don't know."

"I like Albert", said Angie. "He's funny."

"And he never minds if I say I'm a horse", said Mary Alice, my eleven-year old niece. For years now she had thought that she was a horse. She now understood that she wasn't, but it had been a hard shift for her to absorb. She had been proud of being a horse, and she was floundering now that she knew she wasn't.

"When I won the award at school for the highest marks in my grade", said Angie, "he cried. My own father didn't ever even bother to come to award ceremonies. Albert came, and he was so proud of me he cried."

"He's a good man", I said. "He cares so much about people and he loves your mother so much that he will be very hurt by what your mother said."

"Maybe we could write a letter for him?" said Angie. "Maybe we could ask him not to go?"

"That's an idea", I said, "but I think this is something that your mom and Albert need to work out together." Lisa, my three-year old niece, and Victoria, my two-year old niece, were sitting on the bed. Edmund was still in Ranger's arms. I turned to Angie and Mary Alice. "Do you want to hold Tia?"

Angie grinned. "Yes, please!" she said. I knew that I was delaying her upset, but at least I'd been able to make her smile.

Mary Alice looked just as excited, and she skipped over to the bed and sat down beside her sister.

"Tia is very little and weighs about half of what Edmund weighed when he was born", I said. I picked up Tia from where she was sleeping and carried her over to Angie and Mary Alice. I placed Tia in Angie's arms, and Angie stared at her in fascination.

"Was Mom right in that it is easier to have a small baby than a large baby?" she said.

I smiled. "I can't answer that. All I know is that going through labor is not easy, and I don't think it matters how small the baby is. No matter how small the baby is, it's going to hurt."

Angie smiled as Tia yawned, and I watched them carefully as I phoned my mom.

"Hi, Mom", I said as she answered. "I have a favor to ask you."

"Sure. What's that?"

"Val and Albert were just visiting, and they had a bit of an argument. Albert left in tears and said he was moving out tonight. After a minute of reflection, Val decided she didn't want him to leave and has taken off to find him and to ask him not to go. She left the kids here, but they can't stay. The hospital won't like it."

"So you want me to pick the kids up?"

"Yes. The little ones will soon get antsy, although Angie and Mary Alice are having fun meeting their new cousin."

"I'll be over in about half an hour."

"Thanks, Mom." I hung up the phone and stared at Ranger. "I'm stunned. What the hell just happened?"

"Your sister just got a wake-up call", said Ranger, "and it's about bloody time."

_~ The End ~_

_Thank you for reading Nativity 39. I hope you enjoyed it. I will start posting Fraud 40 today. - Sarah_


End file.
